Praveen Gurpur
Siemens Technology and Services Pvt Ltd, India
Title: A telemicroscopy platform for oral cancer screening in India
Biography
Biography: Praveen Gurpur
Abstract
One of the key healthcare delivery problems in developing countries is the non-availability of qualified pathologists in resource poor settings such as rural areas. Patients have to spend significant time, money and effort in traveling to urban areas for accessing medical diagnosis/care. It is highly desirable to have a system that enables local, minimally trained health workers to transmit microscopic images of patient samples such as cytology smears for examination by a remote pathologist. The remote pathologist can access images, analyze them and give their opinion. Based on the opinion, the healthcare worker advises the patient to go to the urban clinic only if is necessary. We have developed a telemicroscopy device for capturing images from a slide into a mobile device. This device was tested in a cohort of patients in and around Bangalore, India for oral cancer detection using brush biopsy. Incision/punch biopsies of the same patients were considered the gold-standard against which results from the telemicroscopy device were tested. The talk will focus on results of the study and potential of the device for oral cancer screening.
