Bengaluru,Sep 23: 5C Network, one of India’s largest AI-native radiology platforms, today announced the launch of its remote Centre of Excellence for Nuclear Medicine. Headquartered in Bengaluru, the distributed, remote-delivery network is engineered to solve India’s acute shortage of nuclear medicine physicians by providing high-precision, sub-specialty remote reading capabilities directly to hospital scanners across the country.
This launch directly addresses a critical bottleneck in Indian healthcare. Over 500 PET-CT installations and 350 SPECT/gamma cameras rely on just ~800 nuclear medicine physicians nationwide. With PET-CT reporting restricted strictly to licensed specialists, a pool growing by only ~40 physicians annually while scan volumes surge 13% scanners outside major metros operate far below capacity. 5C’s Centre of Excellence bridges this gap, unlocking an estimated national market potential of nearly 7,500 daily PET-CT studies.
By utilizing a distributed remote-reading framework, the CoE connects local scanners to a national panel of credentialed specialists, embedding standardized reporting criteria – such as PERCIST, Lugano, PSMA-RADS, and SSTR-RADS and integrating AI decision-support tools for lesion tracking, SUV quantification, and response assessment to assist physicians with speed and precision.
To lead the CoE, 5C Network appointed Dr. Ajit Shinto, a veteran with 20+ years of expertise who commissioned India’s first digital PET-CT scanner and has reported over 30,000 studies. Having established nuclear medicine departments across Kovai Medical Center, Amala Institute, Apollo Proton Cancer Centre, and Bharath Hospital, Dr. Shinto chairs WARMTH’s Rhenium Task Force, serves as Co-Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Research, and is Principal Investigator on the NOBLE and 68Ga Basket trials.
“India has the scanners but not enough physicians to read them, and it cannot add them fast enough, at roughly 40 new specialists a year against volumes compounding at 13%. A Centre of Excellence is how you make scarce expertise travel: pooled sub-specialty readers, interpreting to a high standard, with AI supporting them for speed and accuracy,” said Kalyan Sivasailam, CEO of 5C Network. “Ajit has built this three times over, at Amala, Kovai and Apollo Proton. He has read 30,000 studies himself and commissioned the country’s first digital PET-CT scanner. Very few people in India could recruit the readers this needs and set the clinical standard they read to. He is one of them. And we are delighted to have him lead our CoE.”
“It is a privilege to join 5C. I have not seen another company here that combines medical technology, operational discipline and clinical depth at this scale. Put those together and sub-specialty nuclear medicine comes within reach of any centre in the country,” said Dr. Ajit Shinto, Head of the Centre of Excellence for Nuclear Medicine at 5C Network. “Nuclear medicine in India is limited less by equipment than by reading capacity. A remote reading model built on credentialed physicians takes that scarce expertise to centres that cannot hire it. What a Centre of Excellence adds is depth sub-specialty readers, structured reporting, peer review, AI in the read. Better science, closer to the treatment decision.”
5C Network’s mandate extends beyond daily diagnostics into research, multi-institutional collaborations, theranostics, and new diagnostic molecules, elevating nuclear medicine standards to inspire incoming talent. While initially scaling capacity for underserved Tier-2, Tier-3, and metro hospitals across India, the distributed platform is also structured for future international expansion.