The IIT Alumni Council has launched MegaScope to include data analysis, testing and genomics to accurately diagnose infections and to prescribe personalised medicine.

MegaScope will add host genome mapping along with data backbone, Artificial Intelligence and machine learning to the MegaLab initiative. The target of MegaScope is to improve accuracy of testing, predict likely disease severity and progression, enhance efficacy of treatment and avoid casualties altogether.

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IIT Alumni Council is the largest global body of alumni, students and academicians across all the 23 IITs and partnering Institutes of the India Innovation Network (I2Net).

“The age of healthcare based on one test for all and one medicine for all is fast approaching an end. Covid-19 related research has conclusively demonstrated that people react differently to the same pathogen or disease. The effect of the same medicine also varies from person to person,” Ravi Sharma, President and Chief Volunteer of IIT Alumni Council, said.

“A well-meshed data platform with digitising at the sample end and conversion to personalised medicine at the other end is the only way to change the accuracy and efficacy paradigm. A unified MegaLab, MegaTx and Data Platform approach seems to be the best way to fight Covid and all such future pandemics,” he added.

Adding a data platform and gene sequencing will significantly improve accuracy of testing and enhance efficacy of treatment.

“Under the MegaScope initiative, the entire paradigm has to be re-invented. The RT-PCR testing methodology is oriented only towards checking for presence of the virus. It does not involve collecting any data on the host or human body. If host genome data is added and correlated using combinatorial computation, then it would be possible to predict whether the person required home isolation, quarantining, hospitalisation or emergency procedures,” Girish Mehta, an expert in diagnostics and genetic testing, who was Chairperson of the Diagnostics Group in the C19 Task Force, said.

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“Covid-19 is neither the first pandemic nor is it likely to be the last. The pandemic tested the efficacy and capability of our entire healthcare ecosystem, revealing large cracks and chasms in it. A pro-active approach is required to handle such pandemics in the future. The threat is more real if one combines it with the possibility of biological warfare based on genetically modified pathogens. The monoclonal antibody-based pandemic treatment is one part of the puzzle. Genetic testing is another. Condition assessment through blood biopsy and gut biome testing could be yet another. The unfortunate reality is that as yet, we only know what we don’t know. Preparedness is, therefore, critical. We need to shift the focus to a new normal beyond the Covid-19 pandemic. And that is what MegaScope needs to achieve,” added Arindam Bose, an expert in the large-scale production of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies, who served as the Chairperson of the Therapeutics Group in the C19 Task Force.

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