The Hindu Business Line : GE Healthcare plans radiopharmacy centres

Medical diagnostics major GE Healthcare has said it plans to set up a radiopharmacy centre in Delhi by year-end to provide nuclear medicine for hospitals around the capital.

Similar centres will follow in Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad, according to a release here.

The imaging systems based on nuclear medicine are used to detect a range of diseases from cancer, coronary artery disease, infection, renal disease, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's diseases, epilepsy and stroke.

The radiopharmacy centre, said to the be first in the country, will offer isotopes and radioactive pharmaceuticals in ready doses. It will label and produce radiopharmaceutical imaging tracers and radioisotopes that are required for diagnoses using nuclear imaging, single photon emission tomography (SPECT), positron emission tomography (PET) imaging and PET/CT systems.

At present, hospitals using nuclear medicines import the isotopes, which have to be administered within the decay period of 6-72 hours or even shorter.

GE said the radiopharmacies would address the timely supply of the medicine. "It will also provide a viable solution to the nuclear medicine departments currently facing logistics and manpower shortage," said Mr V. Raja, President & CEO, GE Healthcare South Asia. The UK-based (RPT UK) diagnostics company is a $ 15-billion unit of the US major, General Electric Co.

Dr Harsh Mahajan, Director of the Mahajan Imaging Centre in New Delhi, said radiopharmacies would make isotopes available in India at a significantly lower cost and reduce the problems of timely delivery and logistics.

They would also ensure same-day delivery, lower radiation exposure in hospitals and lower cost to patients and hospitals, according to Mr Sarvadeep Sachdev, MD, Medical Diagnostics, GE Healthcare South Asia. The N-medicine procedures would also grow at a rate of more than 15 per cent annually against the present 10-12 per cent.

GE Healthcare will import bulk quantities of the cold kits through its arm, Amersham Health Private Ltd, with permission from the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board. The kits will be labelled with technetium-99m to make a ready-to-use injectable form for the user departments, the release said.

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