Japanese multinational Fujifilm Corporation has chosen India as a base to try out and fine tune a healthcare screening service model to be developed into a global chain of artificial intelligence (AI) driven preventive healthcare screening centres in the coming year.
Branded NURA, the group has already opened two centres that offer AI aided health screening for the whole body in Bengaluru, Karnataka and Gurugram, in the National Capital Region of Delhi. The screening package covers 15 major organs and lifestyle ailments including oral, lung, colon, prostate, breast and cervical cancers at the moment.
The company terms its screening centres to be quite distinct from other diagnostic centres as it aims to cater to the preventive healthcare needs of healthy, asymptomatic people through specialised offerings. NURA also offers India's first AI health screening centre. While a full body AI health screening at NURA can cost ₹18,000 per person, tests carried out by other hospitals and diagnostic centres for the same purpose can cost double, Dr Tausif Ahmed Thangalvadi, medical director NURA said. Fujifilms' proprietary technology makes the tests safer (due to ultra low dose radiation) and more accurate (due to Ai technology), he added.
The first NURA centre was opened in Bengaluru in February 2021. While the second one was opened in Gurugram on July 21, 2022, Fujifilm plans to announce its third centre in Mumbai in September. The fourth one is expected to come up in Hyderabad. Teiichi Goto, President and CEO, Representative Director, Fujifilm Holdings Corporation said the plan is to open 100 screening centres across the world in the coming years. The initial plan is to cover India's major metros and countries in the Middle East and SouthEast Asia. With each centre to cost about $2 million, the company is looking for a $200 million investment in the near future.
The NURA centres are equipped with Fujifilm's various medical devices including CT scan and mammography system, as well as an AI-based medical IT system that provides interpretation assistance to doctors, and offers Japanese-style high-quality health screening services. The company aims to get local residents and employees of large Indian corporations to avail their services. Daimler Truck, Mind Tree, Cholamandalam are among the corporate groups that have already opted for NURA services in Bengaluru, Dr Ahmed said.
"Ensuring the highest health standards in every region we operate has been our utmost priority. We have a special connection with the Indian market; hence, our purpose is to ensure that health screening services are easily available in the country. We aim to position ourselves where access shall be easier and getting regular screening shall be achievable. We also plan to collaborate with different companies to ensure that a critical aspect of preventive and regular health check-ups is not ignored by the young working class of the country," Goto said.
Fujifilm's health screening service business in India became recognised under the Supply Chain Resilience Projects in the Indo-Pacific region promoted by the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, receiving high acclaim as an initiative that uses digital technology to contribute to solving social issues in emerging economies. The project involves building data coordination infrastructure based on blockchain technology to verify an AI-based mechanism for analysing screening data collected from the three NURA sites to provide feedback to NURA users.
NURA centres are established through a 51:49 stake joint venture entity Fujifilm DKH, formed by Fujifilm and Kerala based Dr. Kutty's Healthcare.
