De­creas­ing the back­log of peo­ple wait­ing to get can­cer treat­ment and up­grad­ing the equip­ment at the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties for quick­er di­ag­nos­tic re­sults is the aim of Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sors Ltd (PPG­PL).

PPG­PL, which is part of the NGC group of com­pa­nies, do­nat­ed 14 pieces of on­col­o­gy equip­ment worth over US$10 mil­lion ($68 mil­lion) which in­clud­ed an MRI unit, an X-ray ma­chine, mo­bile flu­o­ro­scop­ic sys­tems and CT scan­ners.

Last Sat­ur­day, the nat­ur­al gas liq­uids com­pa­ny hand­ed over the on­col­o­gy di­ag­nos­tic and imag­ing ma­chines at the Can­cer Cen­tre, St James Med­ical Com­plex.|

In a sit-down in­ter­view with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian at the Hy­att Re­gency on Wednes­day, PPG­PL pres­i­dent Do­minic Ram­per­sad said can­cer is some­thing that “when it af­fects you, you re­alise what an or­deal it be­comes.”

Ram­per­sad said the com­pa­ny, in ex­tend­ing its in­volve­ment in can­cer treat­ment, part­nered with the T&T Can­cer So­ci­ety over the years to up­grade its ser­vices to the com­mu­ni­ty.

Al­so, PPG­PL, part­nered with an­oth­er en­ti­ty about five years ago, by do­nat­ing dig­i­tal mam­mog­ra­phy equip­ment to the Can­cer So­ci­ety, which has helped with the treat­ment of breast can­cer in the coun­try.  

How­ev­er, he said it was the do­na­tion of this di­ag­nos­tic equip­ment which caused the com­pa­ny to make a step change.

“Just a year be­fore we de­cid­ed to make this do­na­tion, we lost one of our em­ploy­ees to can­cer. It was a heart-wrench­ing ex­pe­ri­ence for us be­cause the time be­tween di­ag­no­sis and death was just about two months. We saw first­hand what he went through in get­ting the treat­ment, but al­so af­ford­ing the treat­ment.”

“So, we went to Gen­er­al Elec­tric and said, this is what we’d like to do. And they were more than hap­py to sup­port us. They told us, at the point of do­na­tion, it was their most up-to-date piece of di­ag­nos­tic equip­ment that was do­nat­ed,” Ram­per­sad dis­closed.

The in­ten­tion, he said, is re­al­ly for every cit­i­zen in this coun­try to be able to ac­cess to first-world health­care for can­cer treat­ment and can­cer de­tec­tion right at the pub­lic hos­pi­tals and not have to spend thou­sands aboard for treat­ment.

“We are here not just to sup­ply you with cook­ing gas. We are here to sup­ply you with oth­er things to make your life bet­ter. And we do think that this do­na­tion is go­ing to make a dif­fer­ence.

“We felt on Sat­ur­day that it’s al­ready mak­ing a dif­fer­ence.  And we will con­tin­ue to sup­port you. This is not the be-all and end-all for us with re­gards to this par­tic­u­lar do­na­tion.  We want to go a step fur­ther as we dis­cussed on Sat­ur­day with the Min­istry of Health, as we see this as a cor­po­rate re­spon­si­bil­i­ty,” he de­tailed.

Now that the RHA’s have this state-of-the-art equip­ment, Ram­per­sad not­ed that the next step is to en­hance the func­tion­al­i­ty and the ca­pa­bil­i­ty of the equip­ment to speed up the rate of di­ag­nos­tic re­sults.

 “I would have dis­cussed with the Min­is­ter of Health and his tech­nocrats, what we can do now with ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence and ma­chine learn­ing and ad­vanced tech­nol­o­gy, how that can now be added to the func­tion­al­i­ty of that equip­ment. So that by the time you do your test, the rate at which the di­ag­nos­tic comes back, and the depth at which it is analysed,  it is now a com­bi­na­tion of tech­nol­o­gy and the ex­pe­ri­ence and ex­per­tise of our lo­cal doc­tors in ad­vis­ing the pa­tient on the next step of treat­ment for that pa­tient. The world has gone in­to ad­vanced tech­nol­o­gy. Every­thing now is be­ing touched by ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence,” Ram­per­sad high­light­ed.

The PPG­PL pres­i­dent re­vealed that the Min­is­ter of Health has ac­cept­ed the of­fer with re­gards to AI, and as a re­sult, the com­pa­ny is now go­ing through the eval­u­a­tion stage to work with Gen­er­al Elec­tric, to de­ter­mine what tech­nol­o­gy they have in the space of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence to ap­ply to this equip­ment.  
“With the ap­pli­ca­tion of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, it means that our doc­tors and tech­ni­cians are go­ing to need to up­skill in or­der to be able to use it. So, it brings learn­ing, it brings de­vel­op­ment, it brings up­skilling.”

 He said it is not just about us­ing the tech­nol­o­gy but how it is used to ad­vance the work of can­cer screen­ing and di­ag­no­sis.

“It has a mul­ti­pli­er ef­fect on the skillset of the peo­ple who are us­ing it. May be in time we may see that the Min­istry of Health put out an ad­ver­tise­ment for AI tech­ni­cians to use this equip­ment. So we see that as the next step, the use of the equip­ment, the up­skilling of the work­force with­in the Min­istry of Health and the med­ical sec­tor. And as the tech­nol­o­gy evolves, we will part­ner with the Min­istry of Health to en­sure that the use of the equip­ment evolves with the tech­nol­o­gy,” Ram­per­sad ex­plained.

Asked how much mon­ey PPG­PL has spent from 2010 to now on can­cer and oth­er projects, he said $90 mil­lion has been spent thus far.

He in­di­cat­ed that the com­pa­ny spends be­tween $2 to 3 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly on projects.

Touch­ing on the oth­er projects the com­pa­ny is seek­ing to em­bark on, Ram­per­sad said PPG­PL is look­ing at en­hanc­ing kid­ney care in T&T.

 “We’ve  seen a lot of emer­gence of dial­y­sis cen­tres be­ing talked about in the coun­try. And we’ve even seen, from some of our em­ploy­ees, com­mu­ni­ties of peo­ple who go for dial­y­sis every day. And you have to ask your­self, well, what is caus­ing that? Just as we’ve seen when we start­ed look­ing at the can­cer treat­ment,  there is a back­log with that as well. So, dial­y­sis is one thing, but dial­y­sis is try­ing to pre­serve what you have,” he out­lined.

Ram­per­sad in­di­cat­ed that the gas com­pa­ny wants to start part­ner­ing with the Min­istry of Health and NGOs in look­ing at what can be done to ad­vance kid­ney care in the coun­try,  not just at the equip­ment lev­el, but al­so at the spe­cial­i­sa­tion lev­el as well. This would in­volve some of the coun­try’s young doc­tors who are spe­cial­is­ing in ar­eas like kid­ney and in­ter­nal med­i­cine.  

“That is now go­ing to be­come an ad­di­tion­al fo­cus for us be­cause kid­ney care, even as it links to things like di­a­betes, is be­gin­ning to im­pact and have an im­pact on the com­mu­ni­ty. As a com­pa­ny, we’ve read a lot of re­search on it and see the link­ages be­tween obe­si­ty, di­a­betes and kid­ney dis­ease,” he said.

Asked whether he has a mes­sage for cor­po­rate T&T to get on board, Ram­per­sad said “We need to lis­ten to the peo­ple. Not just when they speak, but more im­por­tant­ly, when they don’t speak. And we need to un­der­stand what those needs are and when those needs are. We can­not just lim­it our oblig­a­tion to pay­ing our tax­es and think that our oblig­a­tion ends there. We all live with­in this com­mu­ni­ty. And so, it is not enough to sit on the pe­riph­ery and look in.”