Maharashtra: Cancer diagnosis to be affordable with digital pathology system

By: Express News Service | Pune | Published:October 28, 2016 3:28 am

Diagnosis of cancer is now set to become easier and cost effective with on-demand digital pathology system being offered by OptraSCAN — a company of Optra Group.

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The company has recently become part of the ambitious “Cancer Moonshot 2020” programme launched in the US by Biotech billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, attracting an investment of five million dollars to accelerate its product line expansion.

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Created by Pune’s bio-engineer and technocrat-entrepreneur Abhijeet Gholap (CEO, Optra Scan Founder Chairman, Optra Group), who has bagged 17 intellectual rights patents, the OptraSCAN Digital Pathology (OSDP) platform and solutions are made easily accessible through its on-demand system that provides access to digital pathology infrastructure through an affordable, monthly subscription and placement of a small footprint whole slide images scanner at the pathologist’s lab at no additional cost.

Gholap who also is a producer of the national award winning movie Deool said they have created a product which is basically a scanner to scan tissue cancer slides and convert them into high quality images. Confined earlier to only research applications, OptraSCAN provides a tool for transition from conventional microscopy to digital pathology for the acquisition of whole slide images, viewing, sharing as well as analysis and management of digital slides and associated metadata.

He lost his mother to cancer and was later inspired by scientist Dr Raghunath Mashelkar as he designed and built products in a shift from conventional microscopy to automated digital pathology system. “The purpose of our endeavor was to remove subjectivity in microscopy by replacing it with digital pathology in order to make cancer diagnosis more precise and less subjective,” he noted and added that, “We also worked to make it cost competitive.”

Explaining the unique features of OSDP solutions, Gholap said: “We have a software which detects different patterns and classifies them as cancerous versus non-cancerous.” OptraSCAN has also bagged a work order from the Centre for deployment of the telepathology system in remote areas of the country for benefit of rural patients.

The company is also recognised as a research and development unit under the Centre’s Biotechnology Industrial Partnership Programme for designing and manufacturing of affordable health care system.