> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://upnext.world/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # One Breath Test Reaches the Billions of Women Mammography Never Could - URL: https://upnext.world/breath-test-reaches-unscreened-women/ - Published: 2026-09-01T15:01:41.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-01T15:01:41.000Z - Description: Jilma spent a decade in hospitals learning what doctors need and what patients fear. Then she built CanScan, a breath test detecting breast cancer with 95% accuracy for $20. It reaches the billions of women mammography never could, without radiation, without pain, without infrastructure. - Author: Dr. Paul Newton - Tags: Flashpoint POV, Spotlight Jilma Peruvangat spent a decade inside hospitals learning what doctors need and what patients fear. She started as a service engineer at Larsen, moved to Philips Ultrasound Systems, studied the dangers of X-ray imaging, and worked at one of India's leading medical centers. Every job taught her precision, empathy, and the gaps the industry ignores. Then she saw something that stopped her cold. Over 90% of medical equipment in that hospital was imported. Rural clinics had nothing. Women in villages died of breast cancer at stage three and four because they never had a choice. That moment broke something in her. She left to pursue research and built CanScan, a breath test that detects breast cancer with 95% accuracy for $20, deployable anywhere on earth, without radiation or pain. ### Watching Women Die From a Problem That Shouldn't Exist In India, breast cancer is often discovered far too late. Almost 60% of women die from the disease because they never had access to screening at all. The barrier is not science. It is geography, money, and the simple fact that mammography only exists in urban hospitals. Rural women don't have it. Young women in their 30s face a different problem. Cancer progresses fast, sometimes from stage one to stage three in six months. Doctors can only recommend screening every two years because the radiation risk outweighs the benefits of early detection. Yet almost every woman Jilma talked to said the same thing. They don't want to go for screening. They know it could save them. They skip it anyway because the experience is something they dread. Compressing the breast, exposing yourself to radiation, enduring pain that feels unnecessary. Mammography saves lives. It also punishes women for trying to survive. ### A Breath Test That Works Anywhere and Hurts No One Jilma's insight came from studying volatile organic compounds in exhaled breath. Cancer changes the molecular signature of a woman's exhaled breath before it shows up on any image. She collected breath samples from women with confirmed breast cancer and women without it, ran statistical analysis, and found something beautiful. Certain compounds were present at dramatically higher concentrations in cancer patients. Some compounds appeared nowhere else. She developed patented sensor technology sensitive enough to detect these markers at parts-per-trillion concentrations, far more precise than gas chromatography. In clinical validation with 600 subjects, over 100 with confirmed breast cancer, CanScan detected the disease with 95% accuracy. It caught tumours mammography missed. It showed negative when cancer was removed and localized. It works without radiation, without compression, without infrastructure, without pain. A woman simply breathes into a device and gets results in 15 minutes. She can take it yearly instead of risking radiation every two years. It costs $20 instead of $300\. It works in a rural clinic just as well as in a hospital. ### Removing the Pain Women Accept as Necessary Jilma's mission extends beyond early detection. She wants to transform what women's health innovation looks like. For decades, solutions were designed around what technology could do, not what women needed. They centred male biology, allowed pain and stigma, and delayed diagnosis. Now something is shifting. Innovation in women's health is moving toward accessibility, personalization, and technology designed with empathy. She speaks about this with quiet conviction. *"My aim is to remove one small pain of compressing the breast for cancer screening that women have to undergo every year; that is going to be a huge victory for me."* CanScan is one small pain removed. But it is a pain that millions of women endure unnecessarily. Early detection should be available to every woman, not just those within the walls of urban hospitals. That is the future Jilma is building. --- ### About Flashpoint POV Spotlights Flashpoint Global produces each Founder POV Spotlight using its proprietary category leadership framework. Every Spotlight begins with a Future Narrative session, where a founder’s POV is clarified and operationalized as the lens through which new categories are built. The result is content that moves founders beyond product messaging and into the role of category leader, helping the market understand the problem, the stakes, and the future being created. *If you are a founder building a new category,* [*learn more*](https://flashpoint.global/?ref=upnext.world)*.* ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/f7/bd/f7bd9425-660a-4347-a458-f5a607a098d3/content/images/2025/11/upnext-world-tour-map.jpg) ## Sign up for UpNext World A global media platform spotlighting bold founders and future-ready ecosystems. Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.