DARE - Because Entrepreneurs Do

Medicine is becoming more instrument-friendly, thanks to several innovative medical instruments...a market waiting to be tapped

Have you heard of Belgian Mellinoise? The term refers to a breed of shepherd dogs found in Europe. This is not about their bones being used in Chinese medicine. This breed is one of

the few breeds found efficient in sniffing cancer, especially prostrate cancer. In fact, if we were to go by the study conducted by a hospital in Paris, the dogs could identify the presence of prostrate cancer in 63 out of 66 urine samples of patients. It may not be a bad idea to open a kennel and start breeding these dogs, considering the prevalence and outcome of prostrate cancer. Here go the statistics: Prostrate cancer is the second biggest killer among cancers in men. Every one out of six individuals risks prostrate cancer. If you are in USA there is more disheartening news. Every year more than two lakh new prostrate cancer cases are diagnosed with 32,000 deaths. Thank heavens, it is not as prevalent in India.

So what’s the future plan of these scientists from Paris? Take an IPR on the breed and start kennels across the world? Will we encounter sniffer dogs in laboratories in the near future? No, those clever guys know that, that’s not the way to go. Depending on a living organism to achieve a task will be expensive, inaccurate and impractical. Like manpower, ‘dog power’ would be an issue in the laboratory business. So what’s the right way then?

Scientists are planning to first identify the chemicals that dogs are sniffing and subsequently develop a chemical kit to determine their presence in a given sample. Alternatively, they are also trying to develop an “electronic nose” which can accurately discover prostrate cancer. It would be worth knowing a bit more about the electronic nose. Electronic nose is a device developed based on the principles of olfactory apparatus of our nose. There are sensors in the device which react to volatile substances in the sample and generate specific data which is analyzed by a computer. Developing an electronic nose will be easier to replicate, distribute and implement in laboratories. It will also be faster, cheaper and able to assess many samples without getting sick or going off mood.

Human body is a very complex mobile machine which lives and delivers. So are animals and birds. Each of these have evolved systems and functions, with similar or entirely different mechanisms of function rendering them superior or inferior to other living beings. If humans have much higher levels of brain functions with the abilities to perform complex tasks like driving a car; birds like eagles, kites have much finer visual ability suitable for their living. A snake can identify a moving rat at night through heat sensors; bat’s locomotion is facilitated by sonar system. Though human being is equipped by amazing units for perception and analysis, few of them are faulty. For example, human eye is a poor instrument attached to a highly sophisticated analytical visual system in the brain. The very reason we wear spectacles is due to the inability of our eye to properly create sharp images on our retina. Similarly ears loose their ability with age and quite often the nose cannot identify the odour with closed eyes. Thus, perception of human body fails to retain accuracy unlike man-made machines which can be calibrated for a standard output from time to time.

The point is, though we are blessed with complex systems and functions, they are good enough only for tasks necessary for survival. We need more accurate tools, accurate in perception, analysis and reporting various type of critical information. This gap is filled by technology, despite not rhyming well with the paradigm of life, when applied in medical care, that has increased our life span by many years.

If we look at the history of medicine, Indian medical systems embraced more humane aspects of medicine and developed philosophical algorithms and human skills in identifying and treating diseases. The west surrendered completely to technology. The technology along with structured scientific methods provided more mechanical accuracy and reduced humane errors. Today, hospitals are loaded with equipment for every task like diagnosis, treatment and life support. Every medicine is manufactured, stored, transported and administered using latest technologies. Apart from those advanced technologies like MRI (which has a magnet several hundred times stronger than the earth itself), dialysis machine, and ventilators among others which have started sounding mundane due to their common presence and familiarity, some fascinating new ones are emerging to ignite our enthusiasm.

“Capsule endoscope” is one such equipment which can mesmerize our wits. We all know that our food pipe, which starts at our throat passes through several meters taking various shapes and folds before reaching the rectum. The upper or lower portions are accessible (though some with difficulty) for examination due to their proximity to the orifices. Small intestine is the convoluted tube which is farthest from both orifices making it inaccessible for simple endoscope. The latest answer for this problem is a “capsule endoscope” which is nothing but a tiny camera of size 2.6 cm long and 1.1 cm wide. Once swallowed this capsule takes two snaps every second while continuously traveling through our gastrointestinal tract. These images are immediately transmitted to a receiver worn by the patient. The battery lasts around eight hours giving an average of 55,000 images of the inside of intestines, which were never accessible to us without cutting across the abdomen! In the end the patient returns the receiver and the capsule which is expelled with the stools. This discovery is found to be very useful in identifying bleeding in small intestines and other disorders with much more precision. Soon we would be able to control the movement of the capsule and remotely monitor the camera enabling wider application.

The list of latest technologies in medicine will run pages. To compile such a list would call for a book with yearly editions, having significant number of new entries in each. Most of such inventions involve complex technical workup in diagnosis or treatment while few are amusing. Researchers have now developed contact lenses which change their color according to the level of sugar in the blood. So next time you suddenly see your aunt’s black eyes turning blue, remind her about her insulin shot. Synthetic blood, synthetic organs, a new quick fix cement to join bones, lab-grown skin are efforts to improve our survival.

Thinking out of the box, few ingenious inventions have headed to make use of the unique characters and composition of our body for other utilities. One such invention is a cell phone which can identify the owner! Every individual ear has acoustic fingerprints, which means every ear has distinctive sounds in the ear chamber. A cell phone has been devised, which when brought near the ear will scan the ear and identify whether the user is the right owner. It can probably switch off and send signals of location helping its master to find his lost phone. Talking of cell phones, we will find cell phones to be our pocket doctors in assisting us to identify health problems. Pulse, blood pressures and blood sugar analyzers could probably be attached to the cell phone with ease. A valiant effort to attach a microscope which can identify diseases like malaria and tuberculosis from blood samples has been fairly successful, bringing cheer to many African countries afflicted by these diseases. The invention is very significant considering the poor healthcare facilities in those countries.

The technology can see, analyze, compute and store with an incredible accuracy which is beyond human ability. In fact, technology is revolutionizing the very aspect of human vision. Bionic eye is the latest hope for the blind. A bionic eye consists of basically three units. First unit is a camera that is mounted on the spectacles. The camera creates images from every perspective of the person wearing the spectacles. The image created by the camera is sent to the second unit which is a signal processor, placed in the patient’s pocket. This unit converts the image created by the camera into a form of signal which is understood by our brain. The third unit that is surgically implanted inside the retina receives these signals through wireless transmission. This unit is capable of receiving the signals from the processor in the pocket and transfer the same to optic nerve (nerve of the eye), which carries them to the brain. At present this device has succeeded only in creating crude images, just sufficient in helping a blind person to move around. We can expect improvements in this device with abilities to provide better quality images in future. If you wish to nurture the frenzy of thought, imagine the processor being preprogrammed to edit and transmit altered images with few calculations! I am leaving the alterations which can be made to your imagination with few examples. Change tones, convert to black and white, crop image, zoom on a particular part, improve contrast, cut and paste, and blur few parts….etc. What a vision?

Dr. Hrishikesh Damle is a first generation entrepreneur. He is CEO of Atrimed, a pharmaceutical company.

To write to the author, please send an email to dare@cybermedia.co.in with the subject line 'Dr. Hrishikesh Damle'.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are that of the author and do not represent the magazine's.