Big Tech For The Big C

The fight against Covid-19 ushered in access to and advancement in technology for cancer screening and detection

- Pooja Biraia Jaiswal

Last June, Aarti Dhowtall, 23, lost her sexagenar-ian mother, Preeti, to stage 4 lung cancer. The engineering student and her father, Ashok, were caught unawares. For, Preeti showed no symptoms till she started spitting blood. By then, it was too late. “We tried everything; nothing worked,” recalls Aarti. “She just went on deteriorating and, because of low immunity, she caught infections in the hospital, which… led to further complications.”

It is in cases like these that the significance of early detection and diagnosis through screening becomes even more pronounced. The only way to conquer cancer is to detect it early and nip it in the bud. As researchers learn more about the nature of the deadly disease, new diagnostic tools are being developed and existing ones are being further refined. And, this push for innovation in early cancer detection picked pace especially in the post-Covid phase.

“The need for early detection was always acute and dire because that is the only way one can prevent deaths due to cancer,” said Dr Somashekhar S.P., global director of Aster International Institute of Oncology. “What happened in the last year or so is that some of the most expensive technology became accessible and affordable because of the need to tackle Covid and it, in turn, greatly helped oncology.”