Department of Health & Family Welfare, Government of Punjab, Roche Pharma India and Niramai Health Analytix have inked a partnership to accelerate screening and treatment for Breast Cancer in the state of Punjab.

The partnership - Punjab Breast Cancer AI-Digital project, also known as the Pink Project will focus on efforts to ensure timely identification, treatment initiation, and robust referral pathways across the various health centres through technology-enabled, live patient tracking support. 

Dr Vijay Singla, Honorable Minister of Health and Family Welfare and Medical Education and Research, Government of Punjab said, "A total of 15, 000 screenings of suspected females are targeted to be carried out in one year and Punjab Health Department will ensure the mobilisation of people for the screening. Due to the high societal impact and multidisciplinary management of cancer, it will ensure linking all tertiary care centres, down-staging of disease leading to lower costs of treatment and ensure access to best and innovative to treatment for all,” 

The project will focus on: 

1. State-wide screening for early detection of breast cancer cases with an innovative solution - a thermal-based AI-enabled platform for screening, linking to an integrated referral pathway for end-to-end closure with follow-ups for diagnosis and treatment initiation. 
2. The epidemiological data generation to further support policy planning and mapping of the spread of breast cancer cases. The project aspires to proactively initiate early detection and maintain consistency with its digital referral capability by linking tertiary care centres. This would immensely help downstaging the disease as early detection would lead to lower costs of the treatment as compared to patients that were diagnosed in later stages.