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Thirty per cent of instances of cancer among India’s women relate to the breast. That’s ten per cent of all cancer cases in the country.
And while medical treatment is one step in the fight against the disease, early detection is half the battle won.
A wearable device, a vest, being developed by the Indian Information Technology (IT) Laboratory promises to do just that. Clinical trials have been conducted on the prototype, said an official close to the development.
The project, an initiative of the Centre for Materials for Electronics Technology (C-MET) functioning under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), was necessitated after it was found that most rural women were unaware of conventional modes of detection, which involve self examination and mammographies.
Given that instances of breast cancer is only set to rise — the National Cancer Registry Programme put the 2015 figure at 1.34 lakh, which is projected to rise to 1.79 lakh by 2020 — the Centre had been looking to provide affordable detection facilities.
The device, which can be worn like a vest, will have a thermal-sensor to detect cancer. The vest is to be worn for 15-30 minutes. The data would be transmitted to a computer system using equipment developed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (another MeitY arm). Data analysis is developed by C-MET. Clinical trials are now under way at the Malabar Cancer Centre in Kerala
“One of the best features of this device will be that the data collected can be transmitted to hospitals anywhere in the world or analysed from a system,” the official added.
While the scientists involved and C-MET remained non-committal, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister of Information Technology , confirmed the development. “Machine suitable to India at affordable rates for early detection of cancer is being done. I applaud the scientists who have done this work. It is a good initiative in ‘Make in India’. They need to use this technology for helping commercial manufacturing,” he told BusinessLine .
Incidentally, October is observed as the Breast Cancer Awareness month globally.
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