At ~6%, cancer is the 3rd biggest cause of mortality in India after cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. The total number of new cancer cases annually in India is expected to rise from ~1.3 million to reach ~1.5 million by 2025, growing at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of ~2% from 2020 to 2025. Our report highlights the current status of top cancers in men and women. It also sheds light on the main barriers related to screening, diagnosis, and treatment stages and how MedTech and HealthTech companies can help improve outcomes by making the technologies more accessible and affordable
Below is an insightful excerpt from our report.

There is still limited access to screening and diagnosis of cancer, with almost 90% of comprehensive cancer treatment centers in major cities, while ~70% of the population is in rural areas. Although the cancer incidence rate per million population is relatively smaller compared to the developed countries like USA & UK, it might just be the tip of the iceberg with limited access to diagnosis and treatment for the majority of the population.  Very recently a parliamentary panel has recommended Cancer to be a notified disease, to record the cancer incidence rate and death rate more accurately through the creation of a CoWin-like portal. The major finding of this parliamentary panel was that only 10% of the Indian population was covered in the Population-Based Cancer Registry program (PBCR) and Hospital-Based Cancer Registry

The other major issue - limited access to screening and detection of cancer - is primarily because of the low penetration of diagnostic imaging equipment like CT, MRI, Mammography, PET CT, etc. There is also resistance amongst the general population to voluntarily opt for cancer screening tests. Currently, molecular diagnostics-based genetic risk assessment tests are very expensive and beyond the reach of most people.
The Government of India launched a major initiative of establishing 1.5 lac health and wellness centers in 2018, with about 1.1 lacs centers already in operation by March 2022, where there is a program to screen for the most common cancers of the breast, cervical and oral. Hopefully, this program will help in enhancing the access to basic screening for these 3 cancers.

Since early detection and routine cancer screening can help control the disease from becoming life-threatening, hospitals, diagnostic centers, healthtech platforms, and health care centers provide different types of cancer screening tests. Male cancer screening, female cancer screening, or senior citizen cancer screening are a few of the packages that are commonly available in most of the hospitals or clinics in urban setups.

Early detection of cancer has a major impact on outcomes in the form of 5 years survival rate. Currently, more than 50% of patients who get diagnosed with cancer, start the treatment at a late stage with a  very poor survival rate of 10 to 27%.
Our report identifies the screening and diagnosis of cancer as an area where the MedTech and HealthTech companies can have the maximum opportunity to innovate, create diagnostic solutions to enhance affordability and accessibility, and thereby help in improving outcomes, by increasing the survival rate by 50 to 80% for the most common cancers - breast and cervical in women and lung and oral in men.