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After losing my beloved wife Tavinder to cancer in June 2019, I made it my life’s mission to do what she asked: to prevent others from suffering the way she did. Tavinder knew that I would be sad without him–and that the only thing that would keep me going was helping others.
So, with the help of the leading oncologists and medical researchers who tried to help save him, I prepared a big plan to cure cancerwhich includes exponential technologies that I use to teach at Carnegie Mellon’s School of Engineering in Silicon Valley, such as genetic sequencing, machine learning, advanced sensors, and synthetic biology.
The plan is to launch the largest clinical trial in the history of the world, one that will help hundreds of thousands of cancer patients by providing them with the most advanced treatments, with the guidance of world experts. It requires collecting genetic data and bio-samples, creating 3D organoids so that the tumor is the guinea pig instead of the patient, and open-sourcing selective, anonymous data to enable researchers around the world to do what the culture of medical industry. secretly prevents them from doing: developing drugs.
The problem is that such a plan cannot be implemented in the United States, due to the interests of maintaining the status quo and protecting the profits of the medical industry. So I turned to India.
Indian culture and values embody a fundamental belief in a human-centric approach to technology, knowledge sharing, and upliftment of humanity. Yes, there are many obstacles in India’s path, but deep-rooted spiritual principles prevail.
In a meeting with the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, in 2019, he pledged his wholehearted support to the grand plan—and then again in a follow-up meeting last month at his home. in New Delhi.
India also has another asset: philanthropists and industrialists with the highest ethical standards. The man I consider to be one of the greatest humanitarians of our time, Ratan Tata, and the Tata Group, ended up partially funding a project presented to them by Tata’s former lieutenant and head of the Tata Trusts, R. Venkataramanan: to overhaul cancer in India. care system. Venkat and his co-founder and medical director, Moni Abraham Kuriakose, asked me to work with them to implement a distributed cancer care network to guide patients through the entire process of cure cancer–and carry out my grand plan.
Carkinos Health, the company they started, demonstrated India’s unique ability to solve global problems. In two years, it has made great progress. It is now operating in 68 hospitals across the country, has screened 400,000 patients, helped more than 250,000 people with early symptoms, and saved hundreds of lives. It has acquired the most advanced genomic sequencing and diagnostics equipment and established a bio-sample repository, as well as a comprehensive cloud-based IT infrastructure for medical data and reports.
In our recent meeting with Prime Minister Modi, the director of Clinical Research at Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer and Harvard Medical School Keith Flaherty said that India is about to overtake the US in cancer research.
“No other organization on the planet can integrate cutting-edge, digital patient-facing tools and molecular diagnostic platforms to navigate patients for current therapies while also guiding on discovery and developing the next generation of therapies,” he added. He told the PM that academic medical centers in the US are not even close to being able to do such things, because they don’t really have a free flow of information between clinical care and research environments.
As Flaherty explained in another detailed discussion you can view, in the US, Europe, and Pacific Rim, a variety of analyzes were performed on clinical, pathology, radiology, molecular, and treatment data. In no other environment can all data elements be integrated to capture all the complexity of cancer data and use the insights to corner the disease on next-generation, rational combination therapies. In most of these countries, data privacy laws are the same, according to R. Venkatramanan. But each has built barriers to sharing data and knowledge so there is no way to integrate technologies for molecular and therapeutic sensitivity testing under one roof, which can be simultaneously deployed by individual tumor specimen to guide therapy selection, clinical trial participation, and novel discovery. combinations as well as new mechanisms.
India was recently introduced Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission is a welcome departure from this reductionist compartmentalization of healthcare information because it facilitates and mandates interoperability between health systems.
As Gary Reedy, the former CEO of the American Cancer Society, told the prime minister, “Because India has no interests to protect and has a culture of giving and sharing, it can do what the West dreams of.” Both Flaherty and Reedy note a big difference between the US and India: patients in even the most remote Indian villages are willing to trust caregivers and technologies.
This is also the reason why I am working with another company that I have been with for a long time teaching and recently made an investment in, bringing its agricultural technologies to India. Founded in Santiago, Chile, the company, Plasma Water Solutions, has succeeded in replicating the magic that Mother Nature uses to nourish and protect her plants: plasma-activated water (PAW), a substance that results when lightning (plasma) passes through air and water. The company’s devices, with the power consumption of a hairdryer, change the air and water PAW without any chemicals or residues.
Pesticides and chemical fertilizers THERE well documented links to cancer, so reducing it can help eliminate one of the many sources of this disease. A PAW application Deadly almost everything plant bacteria and pathogens. PAW also provokes plants to activate natural defenses against predators, and it accelerates seed germination and seedling growth. Through modulations controlled by the software, the devices also generate nitrates, natural fertilizers. The results of the six-month trial on farms across America were startling. When the vegetables are washed with PAW, it resists fungal infection. And only caring for PAW seeds can increase their growth and germination. In one season, the yield per hectare of melon increased by one hundred boxes of fruit, and the yield of spinach and sorghum per hectare increased by about 450 kilograms. And it’s all organic.
As Plasma Waters CEO Robert Hardt and founder Alfredo Zolezzi said, one of the reasons they made India a priority is the country’s openness to technological advancement in sectors from agriculture to education. . From the dawn of recorded history, India has led the world in science and innovation–and it is poised to do so again.
This is why India’s leadership in the G20 comes at an opportune time. The world is suffering from rampant inequality and industrially induced climate change, and India has the ability to solve the world’s problems without doing more than this. As Prime Minister Modi told me in a tweetIndia is full of enthusiasm for science and technology and its youth are harnessing the power of science to make our planet a better place.
Vivek Wadhwa is an academic, entrepreneur, and author. His book, From Incremental to Exponentialexplains how great companies can see the future and rethink innovation.
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of luck.
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