APOLLO HOSPITALS
One of the other key areas of innovation Apollo is pursuing is in the area of cervical cancer . India has one of the highest incidence rates in the world . Apollo is engaged with companies from Israel and US which offer technologies that include a urine-based DNA test , optical signature- based probe and an Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy ( EIS ) based medical device that differentiates between cancerous and pre-cancerous cells .
Further , four years ago , Apollo embarked on a mission to establish a bio-repository backed by clinical information . As such this information baseline can be leveraged to spawn research and offer personalised healthcare in the future .
Apollo thus incubated its Biobank in 2013 . This self-sustainable bio-bank leverages on bio-samples from Apollo ’ s nationwide network of hospitals and has emerged as the country ’ s single largest biobank . It is a catalogued library that systematically archives ethically consented and anonymised patient samples with associated clinical data . The samples are utilised to develop novel diagnostics tests and therapeutics . Jauhari mentions that such repository enables researchers to develop biomarkers and pharmacogenetic tests . A genetic test to prescribe an effective blood thinner and a breast cancer recurrence monitoring diagnostic were two products which were rolled out by the bio-bank .
While increasing strata of people living in towns and cities have access to annual health checks ,
82 August 2017