Med-tech zones in the country are set to boost business growth prospects for start-up companies engaged in designing and developing critical healthcare equipment, said M Balasubramaniam, president and CEO, CURA Healthcare.
 
The company was one among the participants at the launch of the Andhra Pradesh MedTech Zone (AMTZ) which is India’s first medical devices manufacturing unit spread over 270 acre in Visakhapatnam. “In fact we have taken a facility here for manufacturing,” he added.

In sync with the Union government’s Make in India programme, CURA Healthcare went on to manufacture Illumina 3600 which is the world’s first-ever robotic 360 degree Breast Thermography system. Many companies from India and multinational companies have taken advantage of it to Make in India. We are one such company that well entrenched into it and would welcome more enterprises to be part of it, Balasubramaniam told Pharmabiz in an email.

Local manufacture drives economies-of-scale, creates jobs, provides control over supply chain and enables cost competitiveness. “We have been making tremendous progress over the years. It has taken about 7 years to develop this product. This is a solution designed, developed and manufactured 100% by CURA Healthcare. There is no technology transfer from any country. The camera component is imported and tuned for illumina. The final product is priced around Rs. 30 lakh to Rs. 35 lakh similar to that of an analog mammography system.

In this advanced robot, the protocol is set to allow maximum comfort to patients. There is also an environmental control system that allows dual temperature studies identifying changes during mild hot and cold conditions. There are drawbacks in the equipment manufactured abroad like only few images can taken and the chances of failing to spot key  tissues is high. To offset the same, we have developed advanced algorithms that aid the physician to auto-detect a cancerous tissue early or compare with historical exams and compare with other images for correlation, he explained.  
 
“The way forward is to scout for tie-ups with government hospitals and talks are underway. With illumina being funded by the Union government, we believe this can disrupt the way breast health is being managed today. As a Make in India effort and as a for India product, clinical trials were done on over 10,000 patients across 6 institutions. The final analysis is that our Breast Thermography system is shown to be 97% accurate and can find tissues below 2 mm size. It is a complementary technology for mammography and other structural imaging tools,” he said.

Going by the morbidity and mortality of breast cancer in the world, the company is keen to ensure that patients globally can benefit from early detection and radiation free screening, said Balasubramaniam.