India’s diagnostics industry has seen huge innovations during the COVID pandemic: Mylab MD Hasmukh Rawal

In this interview, Hasmukh Rawal, Managing Director, Mylab Discovery Solutions, tells Moneycontrol about the company’s plans.

What prompted you to venture into the terrain of vaccines and therapeutics and what potential do you see for the company? 

Diagnostics is the starting point in healthcare delivery. Making good diagnostics available is fundamental to all the steps thereon. We are striving to transform diagnostics but are well aware that our customers need support on what happens next. This is the reason why we want to get into therapeutics so that we can develop a complete ecosystem around the health of a patient, through an integrated approach — from testing to treatment. Our focus is to develop world-class diagnostics, vaccines and therapeutics to augment our presence in the healthcare market.

What has Covid-19 meant for your firm so far? 

The Covid-19 pandemic presented us with a huge challenge. In 2020, when the pandemic began, India did not have a single Covid-19 RT-PCR kit manufactured locally. Everything was imported. We were the first Indian company to launch an indigenous RT-PCR test and we developed it in a record time of six weeks from the outbreak. Soon after we launched our other COVID testing products, including India’s first self-test kit, CoviSelf. The latest product, launched this year, was CoviSwift, which is the world’s first point-of-care high-throughput solution for Covid-19. It is the first PoC testing solution that can be used at small labs, in-hospital labs, airports, villages and allows gold standard testing at high throughputs anywhere.  We have been at the forefront of increasing India’s testing capacity for Covid-19 and have been striving to cover the whole spectrum of Covid-19 testing. Our focus is always on developing solutions that the country will be needing next.

With the Covid-19 vaccination programme reaching a stage of near-stagnation in India as the majority of adults are now inoculated, why do you still want to venture into this field? 

With new variants emerging, vaccines remain one of the most effective tools to protect people against serious illness and death from SARS-COV-2. The emergence of new variants means that the risks of infection have increased in all countries for people who are not yet protected by vaccination. We feel that there is still a big gap in the vaccine market that needs to be fulfilled.

What types of drugs will the company produce? Will they be related to Covid-19? 

We will be working on various biosimilars and antibodies along with some of the starting material of diagnostics through our partnership with Shilpa Biologicals. Covid is one of the many therapy areas that we will be working in -- our diagnostic products are spread across oncology, and many infectious and genetic diseases. So, when we look at therapeutics, our focus will be much wider.

What impact do you think Covid-19 has had on the healthcare, drug and diagnostics industry?

The Indian diagnostics industry has been rapidly evolving over the years. However, it has witnessed a huge transition and innovations during the Covid-19 pandemic. Before the pandemic, the molecular diagnostic sector was not fully harnessed and was largely dependent on imports. As the Covid-19 pandemic escalated, several diagnostic players started to indigenise the development of various diagnostic related solutions in India, and played an essential role in making clinical decisions easy, thus helping patients during the pandemic.

The sector is poised to grow further driven by rapid technological advancements, increased awareness of preventive healthcare and several encouraging measures taken by the government. It has a huge potential to benefit millions of our people by addressing the pain points faced by our diverse country. Using technologies such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, IoT (internet of things), the diagnostic sector can overcome disruption and meet cost and quality objectives. The collaboration among pharma, biotech, laboratories and service industries will be key to make high-quality and cost-effective diagnostics available to every citizen.