Inspired by her mother’s efforts to treat the economically weak, a Nagpur based doctor has created a more affordable device that can screen Cervical Cancer, that according to study claims the life of a woman every nine minutes in India. Dr Anupama Bhute-Anand, Gynecologist and Minimal Access Surgeon attached with a private hospital had recently received a patent for her innovative device SinDiColpo meant for Cervical Cancer Screening.
Dr Anupama designed the device considering practical limitations that come across while screening for Cervical Cancer. Notably, Cervical Cancer is the second most common cancer of women in India. It is preventable, if screened well and identified at its precursor stage.
Colposcopy and guided biopsy is a gold standard for screening. But existing Colposcopes are expensive, bulky, need trained and highly skilled man- power and are available in tertiary level hospitals and private hospitals of cities. Thus, women from rural areas are screened only with pap smear or naked eye examination of cervix by VIA or VILI methods, which are likely to have subjective errors, and have a lower sensitivity and specificity. Women tend to neglect undergoing further tests due to domestic responsibilities, lack of financial resources to travel to higher centres and so on, explains Dr Anupama.
To overcome this situation and to screen the unscreened, Dr Anupama did extensive research of 7 years and came up with a low-cost solution in form of a handheld, low cost, user-friendly colposcope with a portable darkroom, inbuilt light source that is integrated with an android phone with required specifications. The device is also having inbuilt password protected software for patient data management report generation. The said device has undergone clinical trials for safety and efficacy and is comparable to the standard device.
This device was developed with technology support from Nagpur based software company embedded creation. SinDiColpo is very easy to use and can be handled even by a primary health care provider at primary health care centres, rural hospitals and mass screening of cervical cancers in camps.
SinDiColpo is a small, lightweight and portable device with rechargeable bat- teries. It does not require sterilisation/ autoclave/disinfection. There is inbuilt password protected patient manage- ment software for storage of patient data that includes demographics and images. The device is user-friendly as it can be used by primary health care providers like nursing staff and aux- iliary nurse midwives where doctors are not always available.
Dr Anupama said, “I was inspired by my mother, Dr Sindhu Bhute, senior Gynaecologist and Professor emeritus at Datta Meghe Institute of Medical Sciences, whom she accompanied for camps in rural areas and witnessed the plight health care workers face to convince women to come for follow up. I have dedicated this device to my mother, hence the name SinDIColpo. This device is currently under process of manufacturing.”
