President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of GE Healthcare, South Asia, Terri Bresenham said that they were in the process of creating a virtual platform where oncology experts could work together.
Virtual boardThe platform ‘Virtual Tumour Board’ was aimed at helping patients get easier access to early detection and better treatment, the CEO told
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She was here for the inaugural of GE Discovery IQ Pet CT, at Sri Ramakrishna Hospital. She said that the platform was at an early stage.
Ms. Bresenham said that for this purpose they were trying to have tie ups with 25 hospitals across the country. She was of the opinion that this was much needed in India as there was a shortage of experts.
She was hopeful that the virtual board would become fully operational by the end of 2015 and that there were plans to link cancer experts in the international arena to the virtual board.
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The CEO said that they were also working on developing technologies and business models through partnerships with hospitals to make the state-of-the-art technologies available to the patients at an affordable cost. She also expressed the need for better awareness for early detection of cancer.
“Early diagnosis can bring down expenses and sufferings of the patients and increase chances of survival,” she said. At this juncture, she pointed out at statistics that early detection helped cure 70 per cent of the cancer patients in United States of America (USA). She said that it was against the mere 30 per cent chances for survival in India, where detection was done when the cancer was at an advanced stage.
On availability of technologies for detecting cancer, she said that the State of Florida in the USA that had population of about 20 million had 150 Pet Scans, against a mere 120 in India that had a population of more than 1.2 billion people. She said that India spent only one per cent GDP for healthcare, which was much less than the four to five per cent that many other developing countries spent.