Founder’s Message

When I met her, she and her husband were at a complete loss as to what she needed to do to alleviate her symptoms and treat their cause. They had consulted several top specialists in the city and were thoroughly confused by the varying diagnoses that they had received, which ranged from TB of the bone to a fractured hip. All within a period of ten days. What baffled me, though, was that her scans and MRI clearly showed a malignancy in her hip joint. She needed hip replacement surgery, but none of the diagnoses she had received explained the abdominal pain.I suspected that the origins of her disease lay elsewhere as she also had an enlarged spleen, which could indicate some type of blood cancer. I consulted with our haemato-oncologist, who concurred. However, it would only be confirmed with a biopsy of the tissue, which we could get during the replacement surgery. After much explanation, the shocked couple agreed to the line of treatment we recommended. The biopsy that followed affirmed our suspicions. Luckily for her, it was a curable form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I have every confidence that she will make a full recovery under the care of our experienced haemato-oncologist. But what continues to bother me is that the information was right there in the scans for anyone to see, if only they had cared to look! Doing the hip replacement alone would not have been a permanent solution.

So, how do we address this gap in our health care? My own experience as a surgeon and teacher has convinced me that treatment is most effective when it is delivered holistically, comprehensively and in time. This is our goal at MIOT International. We have sought out the best minds in every speciality and, by investing in the supporting infrastructure, created an environment that allows them to give their patients their best. MIOT has the facilities for the most advanced imaging and laboratory studies and all types of surgery, right on campus. While not discounting experience, it is also important to us that our doctors are abreast with the latest advancements and technology in healthcare. We work with other leading institutions across the world to share our learning as well as to learn from our fellow-practitioners of medicine.

This has created a unique work culture, where our full-time specialists work in tandem, relying on each other’s expertise and knowledge, to return our patients to normal lives. It may, most visibly, be demonstrated and easily understood in complex surgeries such as liver transplantation, or perhaps in treating victims of extensive trauma, which demands the talents of multiple specialists. However, I see it work, effectively, every day, when we put our heads together to make an accurate diagnosis when initial investigations are inconclusive, to find treatments where conventional methods have failed, to customise therapies and give patients solutions that they may not have found elsewhere. In doing so, we address not just the symptoms, but also their underlying causes and possible complications as a result. Thereby offering them a complete solution to their health issues.