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HOST:
 According to the American Cancer society, many women make fewer visits to the doctor because they don’t have health insurance. St. Barnabas hospital in the Bronx has a plan to bring mammograms to the women who need them. My co-host, Ntshepeng Motema (en-SEP-eng mo-TAY-mah) has the story.

REPORTER:
The new mobile mammogram van parked outside St Barnabas Hospital actually looks more like a recreational van.

But walk inside and it’s more like a regular doctor’s office – there’s a waiting room, magazines to go through while you wait and water for refreshment.

Bert Petersen is the director of the Breast Surgery Department at St Barnabas.

PETERSEN:
The first thing you would do is you would go right into this room this is where you disrobe ad get ready for the services that we can provide. Then we also have this room right here where we also do clinical breast exam.

St. Barnabas has had a mobile mammography van before – their last one has been out of commission for the past two years due to outdated equipment.
As he walks visitors through the van, Dr. Petersen points out some key features of the latest offering.

PETERSEN:
Starting with this right here, so this is the data collection system, this links immediately to our electronic medical records. And the we go right back into this room what is exciting here is state of the art digital mammography which is really key in the new fight against breast cancer because 15% of breast cancers are missed by mammography.

He says a lot of lives could be saved if more women would just get checked out before it’s too late.

PETERSEN:
There is free coverage for mammography in New York State many women do not realize that it is just a matter of applying and meeting certain qualifications.

But the trick is getting this information to those women.

Arlene Riviera who helps patients understand how the system works says their efforts to reach the community are already paying off. Since they aired commercials about the van a day ago she has had more than 20 women call.
ARLENE RIVIERA:
Our phones have been ringing I have had women call me I have had in just a matter of a day or a day and a half say to me I was at home watching t.v and I saw you guys offer free screenings I am age forty I do not have insurance, they have just been calling.

(AMBIENCE OF ADMISSION OFFICER INSIDE HOSPITAL BOOKING APPOINTMENTS)
Some women who make appointments come to the hospital.Inside St Barnabas a patient, who does not wish to identify herself, has just come out of a checkup. She is one of the lucky ones with health insurance and she says all women need to get checked.

PATIENT:
You have to know about your body and health if you want to live longer, if you do not know that’s how you get sick and you die before your time.

The new van will start making weekly rounds around the neighborhood from next week.
Ntshepeng Motema, Columbia Radio News.

With a tiny tissue sample, the DMR, can detect cancer cells in an hour and can be interfaced with an ordinary iPhone. Photo by Jonah Comstock/Columbia Radio News.

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Checking for cancer isn’t a quick process. From the time doctors first notice a tumor-like growth, it takes as much as a week before they can be sure of what they’re seeing.  But a new technology could change all that. Doctors at Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital have completed clinical trials on what they’re calling a Diagnostic Magnetic Resonance device, or DMR. The machine is smaller than a shoebox, and can diagnose cancer in an hour.

Dr. Ronald Ennis is the director of radiation and oncology at New York’s St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital. He says cancer diagnosis usually starts with an MRI or CAT scan, and then a biopsy, which involves taking a lot of cells with a large needle.

“There can be some tissue damage caused by the biopsy itself,” he said. “Those risks are usually low, but in the lung for instance there can be a possibility of causing lung collapse”

But risks like these could soon become obsolete—along with the waiting time for test results. The DMR uses a tiny fraction of the cells a biopsy takes, and can screen them for cancer within an hour.

In Boston, at his lab at Mass General, engineer Hakho Lee showed me to the DMR prototype, which was in three pieces on a table. A metal cylinder in a clear plastic cube, a little smaller than a shoebox, was connected to a plain metal box–like an external hard-drive. That was attached by a jury-rigged cable to an iPhone.  Lee touched the smartphone’s screen, displaying a red chart.

“And this little computer or little electronics is being interfaced with this iPhone here, so, just with a tap, you can start the measurement,” he said.

The “MR” in DMR is the same as in MRI – magnetic resonance.  That’s because the DMR is essentially a scaled down, stripped down MRI machine.  The DMR uses a magnetic field to scan tissue samples for particular proteins, the calling cards of whichever kind of cancer the doctors are looking for.

Cesar Castro–another doctor at Mass General–says that in tests like this one, DMR also detected cancer more accurately than traditional biopsies. But speed and ease of use are where the machine really shines. With a DMR, patients could get an immediate diagnosis at their bed-side, or even from their family doctor.

“It essentially equips the clinician and the researchers with more information about the status and kind of a snapshot of the cancer throughout the course of therapy. We haven’t been able to do that previously with prior technologies,” Castro said.

Cancer may not be the only disease the DMR can detect. By changing the protein markers, engineer Hakho Lee envisions using the device in third-world countries as a near-instant test for tuberculosis. The machine is also cheap to make – about $200 each if they were mass-produced – though Castro says the DMR will still need to be handled by medical professionals.

Dr. Ronald Ennis is cautiously optimistic about this invention. He says the greatest benefit could be to patients, who experience a lot of anxiety waiting to hear about test results.

“If that could be shortened to an immediate procedure instead of you know a week or two of one scan and then a biopsy and then waiting for the results, that would be great in terms of patient experience,” he said.

Ennis warned that technologies that look good in a lab don’t always make it into the real world, and he admits that a cancer detector that’s smaller, faster, cheaper, AND more accurate than current methods sounds too good to be true.  But if the DMR makes it through clinical trials, it may turn out to be just that.