Around the time that Dipa Karmakar was preparing for Rio 2016, another little girl, Deepa Gupta, was also preparing for a test. This test would not land her any medals, but it would be another first for India, being possibly the first successful use of an innovative technology to treat a life-threatening heart blockage in a nine-year old child.

Just like Dipa’s performance at Rio was as much about her grit as it was about being in the right place at the right time, Deepa’s tenacious journey is as much a story of breakthrough science, as it is about innovation being available where needed.

A year ago, Deepa was severely ill. Unlike other kids, who hopped, skipped and ran back from school, the simplest of tasks would have Deepa clutching at her chest. A rare genetic condition called Familial Hypercholesterolemia (affecting one in 500 individuals) was responsible for abnormal lipid levels, leading to plaque build-up in Deepa’s arteries. The condition is characterised by high levels of ‘bad’ cholesterol; in Deepa’s case, cholesterol levels exceeded 4-5 times the normal levels. Deepa’s elbows, knees and ankles had visible little patches of cholesterol deposits, indicative of the high cholesterol levels in her body.

Deepa’s left coronary artery, which supplies blood to the heart muscle, had a 90% block. What made Deepa’s condition poignant was an elder sister, who died at the age of five, with similar complaints; sadly, undiagnosed.

Atherosclerotic coronary artery disease is a rare event, for someone Deepa’s age. A coronary bypass surgery was ruled out because of various factors. Angioplasty with a conventional drug-eluting stent presented another set of issues. The sizes and contours of organs and blood vessels of young patients change, as they grow physically. The artery’s diameter becomes bigger, but the stent size remains the same, necessitating more future surgical interventions. In Deepa’s case, there was also a high chance recurrence of coronary artery disease due to the genetic disorder.

So we needed an innovation that unblocked the artery and then, as Deepa (and her blood vessels) grew physically with age, would disappear.

Enter the world’s first fully dissolving scaffold. A Bioresorbable Vascular Scaffold (BVS) is a revolutionary; fully-dissolving heart stent that has been hailed in medical circles as the next iteration in stent technology (The device recently received a US FDA approval). Unlike conventional stents that remain in place permanently, the magic of a fully dissolving heart stent is that it opens the blocked artery and over time, disappears, dissolving into carbon dioxide and water.

Deepa was possibly the youngest patient globally to be treated with this revolutionary technology.

Even as one bemoans the ‘third world’ nature of general healthcare in our country, stories such as Deepa’s amply demonstrate that our health care regulators, government, doctors and companies can come together to usher in the latest medical innovation. In fact, India was among the first countries in Asia to make a BVS available, so the lesson here is that we need to make sure that we are in the right place at the right time and take the right steps to harness these advances in science.

As the debate over introducing price control in medical devices and making them more affordable continues, we must not lose sight of the value that state-of-the-art medical innovation brings to our patients. Innovation is necessary to push science ahead, to give hope to thousands of Deepas. The government, in its meetings with stakeholders in August, has taken a significant step forward, by asking for the development of a scoring matrix that could help differentiate innovations in stent technology.

This is a welcome move, as without such differentiation, all stents would be the same, and the value of innovation would be completely lost. Stifling scientific innovation and creativity at the altar of standardisation will impact every one of us, in the long run.

Just like Dipa Karmakar’s progress heralds a new beginning for Indian athletics, Deepa Gupta’s story could also be an inflection point for a rethink on the ‘one price for all’ stent pricing mechanisms. Done right, differentiation of stents, based on the value they add and the innovation they bring, will herald a progressive chapter where innovators, regulators and doctors have only one priority—the well-being of the patient.

Given the heart disease burden in this country, this is perhaps our only chance to get it right.

Dr Ravat is a senior interventional cardiologist and head of department, cardiology, Fortis Hospitals, Mulund, Mumbai. Views are personal