The New Delhi-based, Mediard Tech India Ltd, a firm promoted by two senior doctors and a Texas-based software engineer, is setting up the country's first, 3D conformal, intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) facility for cancer treatment at Bhubaneswar in Orissa at a total cost of Rs. 28 crore. The project, Hemalatha Hospital & Research Centre (HHRC), will be completed in two phases by July 2003.
The Technology Development Board (TDB) of the Union government has recently signed an agreement with Mediard Tech whereby it will provide soft loans to project. Speaking to Pharmabiz.com, Dr Arabinda Kumar Rath, chairman, Mediard Tech, said that the TDB had committed to bear roughly 50 per cent of the total project cost. The first phase of the project wherein the equipment installation will be completed, will be commissioned in August, 2002 at a cost of Rs 17.5 crore whereof Rs 8.5 crore would be TDB loan. The final phase will be completed in another one year.
One salient feature of the project is that for the first time in the country, it would aim to develop software packages for integration of digital imaging devices with modern linear accelerators. Most of the developing countries are yet to shift from the conventional cobalt-60 radiotherapy device to the new 3D conformal therapy due to the high cost of the latter. In India too, barring a few leading hospitals networks (like Apollo in Chennai, Jaslok and Hinduja in Mumbai, Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute, Indraprastha Apollo and AIIMS in New Delhi), most of the cancer treatment centers still use the conventional therapy. Currently, the equipment for 3D therapy is sourced entirely by imports with multinational companies like Siemens and Varian being the main suppliers.
According to Dr P S Gourishankar, advisor, TDB, under conventional therapy, which involves delivery of large dose of radiation, the delivery is not precisely targeted at the malignant tumour. Due to the imprecision, surrounding healthy structures also get radiated and damaged. This is due to the lack of three-dimensional information of the tumour and of the surrounding structures. The new 3D therapy allows more precise targeting of the beam to affected tissues. The Bhubaneswar facility, which derives the latest in both radiation oncology and medical physics, would be marked by its seamless networking with appropriate clinical environment. New generation diagnostic equipment will be suitably networked to the system.
With Dr Rath, who is chief consultant with Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals, Dr Uma Mishra, a radiation oncologist and Ashwini Kumar Rath, a Texas-based software professional are co-promoters of HHRC.