Ensuring better screening for better health

2020 was an extremely difficult year for most companies and we have spent time to review, rethink, and possibly reboot. Hemogenomics has a positive outlook for 2021 and will focus of cementing our current leadership in blood screening, while entering new areas where we can play a significant role in screening and diagnosing infectious diseases, and cancer.

As things are getting back to normal in our core business, blood screening of donated blood, where we are the pioneers of ID-NAT (Individual Donor Nucleic Acid Testing) technology in India, We now plan to expand into smaller cities and towns and also provide serology on advanced and fully automated chemiluminescence technology (CLIA) making it a more comprehensive blood screening portfolio.

We have the largest NAT installation base in the country, and pride ourselves on being the trusted partner for several reputed hospitals and blood banks across the country. We have, so far been able to impact more than 4 million lives, through the ID-NAT technology. Premier hospitals and blood banks like Narayana Group of Hospitals, AIIMS, Fortis Escorts Heart Institute, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, Indraprastha Apollo-Delhi, Hinduja Hospital, KDAH, Medicity, CMC Vellore, SCIMST Trivandrum already use IDNAT and 2021 will see the user list grow significantly.

COVID-19 has taught us the value of health and life. We are therefore now venturing into newer areas, such as molecular testing and cancer screening, particularly cervical cancer screening. Cervical cancer is amongst the few cancers which can be prevented if detected early and we are determined to make a paradigm shift in the early detection of cervical cancer by bringing appropriate screening technologies like liquid based cytology (LBC) and HPV mRNA testing to India, thus saving lives with timely diagnosis.

India has the highest number of women with cervical cancer in the world. Despite significant progress in reducing cervical cancer rates in recent decades, thousands of women die from the disease each year. This trend underscores the urgent need to continue to raise awareness and understanding of how healthcare professionals and women themselves can prevent cervical diseases from spreading. Need of the hour is screening millions of women in India and this can only be possible through partnership with government and other large NGOS.

We have to deal with the socio-cultural issues, the availability of trained gynocologists and pathologists in rural India, lack of equipment and training etc. We have to collect samples from various places in India and bring it to many centralized centers for testing for both cytology and HPV.

Molecular testing requires automation, high throughput and less dependance on a technologist. Apart from HPV detection, we also plan to increase the testing menu by adding assays for the detection of viral infections and sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Our virology portfolio includes precision testing for HIV-1, HCV, and HBV and common STIs like gonorrhea, chlamydia, and trichomoniasis. We are focused to help patients live healthier.

At Hemogenomics, diagnosis and disease prevention are at the heart of everything we do and we will remain a predominant player in the area of screening for diseases, because prevention is always better than cure. Thus, our objective for 2021 is ensuring better screening for better health.