Metabolic comorbidities are an emerging global pandemic. With over ~460 million adults in the age of 20-79 estimated to be living with diabetes, 50% of these are undiagnosed. Additionally, ~370 million adults are at an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes. While ~1.13 billion adults across the globe are suffering from hypertension, only 1 in 5 have it under control; hypertension is also a major cause of premature death worldwide.
India, which is notoriously the diabetes capital of the world, is estimated to have over ~100 million diabetics and ~136 million pre-diabetic people. Most of these disorders can be managed or delayed if detected early- but there are no tests that can perform early detection of metabolic disorders like diabetes and hypertension.
Gayathri, an electrical engineer and an MBA professional from the Illinois Institute of Technology, comes from a family of doctors, but most elders in her family suffer from diabetes, hypertension or both. In 2017, unfortunately one of Gayathri’s close family members succumbed to chronic diabetes; moved by the incident she pushed herself to find a solution. Leveraging her rich experience from leading data science projects for Microsoft and Nokia and her sister’s medical background, she explored early screening solutions by capturing and sensing radiations coming from the human body and their correlation to metabolic parameters. She worked on infrared (IR) thermography sensors and machine learning models to help identify the risk of developing the most common metabolic conditions.
Aarca research, has created a first-of-its-kind, ultra-affordable, early screening solution for detection of Type 2 Diabetes, Hypertension, and High Cholesterol using completely non-invasive technology. Aarca uses a set of sensors to scan the finger tips and the artificial intelligence engine generates a real-time metabolic health report covering 18 parameters.
Aarca’s innovation fills the screening gap in early clinical substages and long before these conditions are clinically diagnosed through blood tests or blood pressure cuffs. The technology provides ease of testing and a much better experience overall- including non-invasive screening, giving instant results and no requirement to take the test under fasting. Aarca has the potential to offer this test at scale at just ~INR 10 per scan – much lower than the combined pricing of all tests required to predict the risk of diabetes, hypertension, and High Cholesterol.
While Aarca has completed and published clinical trials of ~500 subjects, indicating a sensitivity and specificity of ~86% and ~93% for diabetes, it is undergoing further validations through other ongoing programmes.
Aarca has been recognized by the National Program for Prevention and Control of Cancer, Diabetes and Cardiovascular diseases (NPCDCS) and has partnered with personal and corporate wellness companies like MediBuddy, Bridge Health, Truworth Wellness, healthcare solution providers like KIMS Hospitals, Vitality Healthcare, employers, digital-health firms, and non-profits.
They also have direct partnerships with some corporate clients like Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Tata Advanced Systems, Intel and Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport where they conduct camps and provide aggregated risk profiles of employees. Aarca also caters to major government bodies under the National Health Authority and is a part of the National Program for Prevention and Control of Cancer, Diabetes, Cardio-Vascular Disease and Stroke (NPCDCS). Recently, Aarca has been onboarded for an ambitious initiative by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) for metabolic risk assessment of a population of ~50 lakh individuals over the next three years, across the 28 Non-communicable Diseases (NCD) cells under its jurisdiction. Additionally, the BMC is also aiming to get another large-scale health risk assessment done in the Thane region for ~15 lakh individuals over the same period.
