Coordinated Care Management

November 02, 2012

PGIMER, RAD-AID, Philips Complete Asha Jyoti Pilot Program



PGIMER, RAD-AID and Royal Philips Electronics have released the results of the pilot project under the Asha Jyoti program. The results of the six-month pilot were announced at RAD-AID conference on International Radiology for Developing Countries, held at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland.

With an aim to deal with several unfulfilled healthcare requirements in India, the program has triumphantly achieved its objective of offering breast cancer, cervical cancer, and osteoporosis screening to at least 500 women in its preliminary pilot stage. At least half of the women included in the pilot were from very poor socio-economic groups in India. These women were offered health screening at their doorsteps for no extra cost using a mobile unit.

In a statement, Dr. N. Khandelwal, Professor and Head, Radiodiagnosis Department, PGIMER said, “Our vision for Asha Jyoti was to develop a high quality, mobile screening facility to provide decentralized primary healthcare on people’s doorsteps, to detect three major diseases effecting women’s health earlier, and to provide diagnostic follow-up and therapy to the community. A multidisciplinary team of health care specialists from our Institute, one of the premier institutions in India, formulated this program, and the teams from Philips Healthcare and RAD-AID supported the initiative to make it a reality and ensure that we reached the underserved population in the northern part of India.”

The Women's Healthcare Outreach Mobile program, Asha Jyoti was unveiled on 22 April 2012 at the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research or PGIMER, Chandigarh. The program aims to detect breast cancer, cervical cancer and osteoporosis, prior to the individual showing any signs or symptoms. The results for the pilot, a people-based screening program especially for women between 40 and 60, were released within 10 days. Follow-up testing and treatment were also available at PGIMER hospital.

Diego Olego, Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer, Philips Healthcare said, “Asha Jyoti is an innovative way of delivering sustainable health care to the most needy women, by bringing state-of-the-art diagnostic equipment, high quality clinical care and education to rural and semi-urban areas. This initiative is one more example of how Philips creates the future of healthcare and enables clinical partners to save lives.”




Edited by Brooke Neuman
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