Fujifilm Corp, the Japanese imaging and healthcare solutions company, on Thursday announced its foray into India’s fragmented diagnostics market with the launch of a health screening centre in Bengaluru in collaboration with Dr Kutty’s Healthcare (DKH).

The facility, named NURA, is equipped with artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled imaging and expert healthcare services to test for 10 common cancers including oral, breast, cervical and lung, and other lifestyle diseases, said the company.

“Cancer is very much a curable thing in Japan. In India, the survival rate is only around 30 per cent but if we can detect cancer at a ‘localised’ (early) stage then the survival rate can be more than 90 per cent,” Masaharu Morita, Global Marketing/New Business Manager, Modality Solution, Medical Division, Fujifilm, told BusinessLine .

In medical parlance, Stage 1 cancer is called ‘localised’ where the spread is only into nearby tissues. In Stage 2, the cancer grows to get into regional areas (lymph nodes) while Stage 3 and 4 are more advanced where it spreads into distant parts of the body reducing the chances of survival.

“With NURA, our vision is to introduce the culture of periodic health screening in India, as we believe that early detection and treatment are very important to improve the survival rate of cancer patients,” he added.

A recent article 'A roadmap for the early detection and diagnosis of cancer' published in The Lancet Oncology also said that patients diagnosed with cancer at an early stage have the best chance of curative treatment and long-term survival.

Morita said that while national cancer screening is widely developed in Japan and European countries such a culture is not seen in India. According to GLOBOCAN 2020 database released by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), India sees a 5-year survival rate of about 30 per cent of cancer patients.

The Bengaluru centre, which has the capacity to screen 10,000 patients annually, will target medium- to high-income households.

“We also aim to create 100 such centres as fast as possible. We first chose Bengaluru because it's an IT hub and early adopters. We will now look at places like Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai and Pune,” said Morita.

The centre will be run by Fujifilm DKH LLP, a joint venture between Fujifilm and DKH, which has 14 diagnostic centres in India besides hospitals and screening centres in West Asia.

“We have the operational capacity and Fujifilm comes with the technology background. We joined together to maximise our companies and resources and make screening more affordable," said Mohamed Kasim, President, DKH.

“With the launch of this examination centre, we aim to create awareness and an environment of opting for regular medical screening and taking preemptive healthcare measures,” he added.

In addition to 10 cancer tests, the centre will provide total medical examination services such as early detection of risks of metabolic syndrome and locomotive syndrome, for the examination of lifestyle-related diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and myocardial infarction.

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