How one company is revolutionizing the future of cancer detection

What if cancer detection was as easy as a breath test? Well, that’s the vision of Silicon Valley entrepreneur Vivek Wadhwa. He joined TheStreet to discuss how Vionix Biosciences is using AI to take medical diagnostics to the next level.

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Full video transcript below:

VIVEK WADHWA: One of the biggest problems is that we are not diagnosed with the disease. The entire US medical system is geared towards keeping us sick and then pumping us with chemicals throughout our lives. What if we could diagnose the disease in its early stages? What if we did frequent tests at home with urine, breath, if necessary, blood and we could know exactly what disease we are about to get? Medical diagnostics at the next level. That’s what I’m trying to make possible with a whole new set of technologies that turn biology into light and then use artificial intelligence to analyze the spectrum of light to tell us what’s in it.

CONWAY GITTENS: So what is the problem your company is trying to address. Does the diagnosis take too long, is it too expensive? Not patient friendly, not doctor friendly?

VIVEK WADHWA: All of the above you know, how often do you get your blood work done? How often are you tested for any disease? It’s only when you’re, you know, really, really sick and you go to the doctor that the doctor orders a blood test and you get the results a few days later. What if you could go to the supermarket and take a breath test and have it diagnose all the diseases you could have. That’s what I try to do as cheaply as possible. Reduce the cost of medical diagnostics to almost zero.

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CONWAY GITTENS: So you think now is the right time. I mean, especially after covid, a lot of people used to like, you know, spit in the bottle and twist it and do all kinds of things. Maybe pre-covid people don’t like such things. Do you think people will be more adaptable to your technology?

VIVEK WADHWA: Yeah, you know, during covid, we realized that we need to, you know, get tested to see what disease we have. Well, you know, we’ve also had diseases since the beginning of humanity, you know, all kinds of diseases, including cancer. The idea is to diagnose them and reduce the cost of diagnosis. And to make diagnostics universally available, so you can do it even at home. This is what I’m working on, a very ambitious project. And it looks like science fiction. I mean, you know, everybody reminds me of Theranos with all these promises that were made. Well, this is 10 times more ambitious than Theranos, and what I’m doing is making all the technology available to researchers around the world, and we’re open to anything. So no secret. You know, it’s not about the money. It’s about helping humanity. And it’s a technology that I know works because we already have a pilot unit working and we’re already receiving massive amounts of data and training our AI with it.