medical application – The KGP Chronicle

Stepping-up Health Tech

IIT KGP and ICMR Collaboration for Mega Boost to Medical Technology Industry and Healthcare Ecosystem of India

Times of India Careers 360 Economic Times NDTV Education UNIIndia India Today Hindustan Times Indian Express Express Healthcare Outlook Business Insider

IIT Kharagpur is going to set up a Centre of Excellence on Medical Device and Diagnostics to foster innovation of affordable and indigenous medical devices and diagnostics in priority areas and promote entrepreneurship. The proposal has recently been accepted for funding of ₹20 crore by Indian Council of Medical Research.

In January 2020, ICMR had given a call for setting up a Centre of Excellence based on which IIT Kharagpur had proposed for the set up with thrust areas encompassing artificial intelligence in healthcare, medical devices for screening and diagnostics in healthcare, medical implants, biosensors in healthcare etc.

“We thank ICMR, the apex body of Government of India spearheading biomedical research, for entrusting us with this responsibility. We look forward to working closely with ICMR and making meaningful contributions through these efforts. We had a rewarding experience in engaging with ICMR through a pilot ICMR – IIT Kharagpur MedTech internship program that drew great interest among engineering and medical students,” said Prof. V K Tewari, Director, IIT Kharagpur.

India’s population size makes her healthcare challenges particularly the needs of the marginalized population in remote areas, unique, which require indigenous solutions. Accessibility and affordability have to be two key pillars of India’s medical technology development efforts. The coming together of ICMR and IIT Kharagpur is expected to give a big boost to already initiated R & D efforts at IIT Kharagpur that aim to lessen the burden of present pandemic. Further in the long run, this association will help the Institute achieve the goals set for the upcoming Dr. B C Roy Institute of Medical Science & Research, a R & D driven super-speciality hospital followed by the first of its kind medical college in the IIT system.

“Recently we heard that people residing in nearby areas of West Bengal and neighboring states of Jharkhand and Odisha are feeling hopeful that the burden of accessing healthcare facilities on patients and their families would be reduced with the upcoming superspecialty hospital of IIT Kharagpur. This can be taken further by catering to the need of a patient to visit a hospital through technology enabled healthcare at home and local level. The ICMR-IIT KGP Centre of Excellence will carry this responsibility forward with the much needed boost by bringing medical and technology domains together” said Director Tewari.

The centre will target to develop marketable technologies in a mission oriented time frame and use this experience to achieve longer-term goals to address challenging problems in the field of medical devices and diagnostics. Also, new intellectual property generation and a clearly defined licensing path will be the priority of the centre. Further the centre will try to extend medical technology related support to other organizations including different centres of ICMR.

For Project Information: Prof. Goutam Saha, gsaha@ece.iitkgp.ac.in

Follow IIT Kharagpur on Social Media: Facebook:@IIT.Kgp|Twitter: @IITKgp|Instagram: @iit.kgp

Innovating for Rural Healthcare

Financial Express Times Now Economic Times The Hitavada The Week Amar Ujala Sakshi Business Standard Millennium Post Express Healthcare

Do you think compact discs are devices of the past? May be for your laptops, but not for researchers at IIT Kharagpur who have redefined the use of CDs for low-cost medical diagnostics. Researchers from IIT Kharagpur led by Professor Suman Chakraborty from the Department of Mechanical Engineering have recently innovated a simple low-cost motorized spinning disc-based kit to perform Complete Blood Count (CBC).

CBC is a collection of the most commonly required blood tests that is routinely suggested by the medical doctors, to assess a wide range of diseases spanning from common fever to cancer. The existing methods for this test are prohibitively expensive in the tune of ₹ 200 for the underprivileged population due to the requirements of sophisticated instrumentation and trained personnel.

“We have proposed a unique low-cost kit comprising a motorized device as a blood cell counting platform. The device is a simple spinning disc running on a small motor which is capable of performing the test whereby the parameters such as haematocrit (packed volume of red blood cells), haemoglobin, red blood cell (RBC), white blood cell (WBC), and platelet counts are estimated with an accuracy higher than 95 % as compared to an automated haematology analyser,” said Prof. Chakraborty.

This novel innovation which included Ph.D students Rahul Agarwal and Devdeep Mukherjee, and Post Doctoral Fellows Arnab Sarkar and Arka Bhowmik has recently been reported in Biosensors and Bioelectronics, a high-impact flagship Journal from Elsevier. [Download Paper]

Explaining the methodology, Ph.D students Rahul Agarwal and Devdeep Mukherjee said, “The method essentially exploits the difference in densities of cells for separation in a rotating disc due to centrifugal force and implements label-free imaging method for counting the separated cells within the spinning disc.”

The researchers highlighted on the biodegradability of the disc after using it for multiple sample testing.

“The design and fabrication techniques have been kept simple along with potential automation thereby making the device portable and eliminating the need of trained personnel. Most significantly, eliminating any need for downstream processing of the separated blood,” remarked Post Doctoral Fellows Arnab Sarkar and Arka Bhowmik.

This innovation is expected to bring down the cost of one Complete Blood Count test to about ₹10.

“Such an innovation of medical device may result in a paradigm shift in providing diagnostic services to the underserved rural population at large. The upcoming superspecialty hospital of IIT Kharagpur would operate in a hub and spoke model, and would use several of such devices to ensure improved reach of telemedicine and mobile healthcare to the last man of the society,” said Director V K Tewari.

Regarding commercial product development and availability, Prof. Suman Chakraborty reaching out to MSMEs.

“The Common Research & Technology Development Hub on Technologies for Affordable Healthcare supported by the Government of India’s DSIR aims to support growth & development of precision manufacturing of innovative technologies through MSMEs to reduce India’s massive import in healthcare technologies and their affordability and accessibility. The CBC kit will be a key product which could be licensed and be made market ready by MSMEs connected to this Hub,” he said.

More such healthcare technology commercialization is in the process confirmed Chakraborty.

Agenda for the future

Natural biopolymers made from silk, chitosan, collagen, gelan gum are now not only used to make scaffolds for tissue engineering, but they can also be used to create a “3D cell culture microenviroment” to investigate the proliferation and migration of cancer cells. The information was given to the audience by Dr Subhas C. Kundu of the University of Minho, Portugal at the International Conference on Advances in Polymer Science and Rubber Technology (APSRT) at IIT Kharagpur held from September 24-27. At another session at the same conference, Prof. Sanjib K. Patra of the Department of Chemistry of IIT Kharagpur explained how a new class of polymers developed by his department could be used to develop cheap and efficient chemical sensors for detecting explosives such as nitroaromatics (NACs).

Inauguration of the International Conference on APSRT

From the use of polymers in life science, to the development of smart materials and composites, novel synthesis and modification process of elastomers to green and sustainable processes and technology for the rubber industry, everything was discussed under the sun at APSRT that saw 250+ delegates from 10 countries, 4 plenary lectures and a cumulative 130 lectures and presentations.

From conventional applications in the field of automobiles, construction, commodity materials and engineering, polymer and rubber materials are finding smart applications in different critical and strategic areas such as defence, microelectronics and the life sciences.

Keeping with the needs, researchers have been developing polymer based composite materials that have unique self-healing and shape-memory properties. But to explore new possibilities, new products and technology, collaboration between industry and research institutions is necessary. In keeping with this objective, APSRT brought together distinguished scientists, faculty members and technologists from the academia and industry the world over.

Prof. Tony McNally of WMG delivering his plenary lecture

“The main objective of this conference is to bring the scientists and technologists working in polymer science and rubber technology under one umbrella to discuss recent advances and innovative technologies…They will discuss the future trends towards 2030,” said Prof. Nikhil K. Singha, Head of the Rubber Technology Centre, which organized the conference.

Sustainability was a predominant issue at the conference, with the speakers not only emphasizing on sustainable technology but also the circular economy within which polymer science and the rubber industry had to root itself. The circular economy approach in fact was driving innovation within the broad sustainability framework, that is through waste prevention, re-use, repair, remanufacture and recycling. Attention was directed at the making of automotive tires from dandelion, the use of biobased products like wood scraps being as substitutes for rubber additive. Sufficient attention was also drawn to recycling technology of not only rubber but also PET bottles, and the use of polymeric materials as sustainable solutions for various applications like architectural coatings, protecting coatings, refrigerants and fire suppressing agents. Prof. Sadhan K. De, retired professor of IIT Kharagpur, who was the Guest of Honor at the inaugural session, stressed on the effective utilization, recycle and reuse of plastics.

An overwhelming number of lectures brought home the novel ways in which polymers are being used for biomedical applications. Attention was drawn to how niche products like fluoropolymers can be used to fabricate nanoengineered 3D printed anatomical models for surgical planning and clinical training, nanogels can be used to target and kill cancer cells preferentially, how hydrogels are already being used to produce polyurethane wound dressings capable of indicating infection, how resilin and silk-based hybrid biomaterials can be used to produce hydrogels for cartilage tissue engineering or how molecules are being developed for long term drug release by controlling hydrophilic-hydrophobic balance of the superstructure of molecules that are designed through urethane linkages and other myriad innovations.

The development of new and smart materials drew as much attention. Take the synthesis of PEEK (polyether ether ketone) polymer and its composites that are already being used in aircraft, Dielectric elastomers that can be used in actuators, sensors or artificial muscle, Nanocomposites with periodic arrangement of nanoparticles that can be used in photonic devices and sensors, or the composite polymer material that can immobilize and catalytically degrade nerve agents.

Novel polymerization techniques and the functionality of polymers were also discussed. Some like Dr Huiqi Zhang of Nankai University, China, suggested controlled radical precipitation polymerization. Others suggested the use of ultrasound or ultrasonic polymerization to synthesize polymer nanoparticles or new ways to do RAFT polymerization, design and synthesis of step-growth polymers, or electrospinning to engineer biomaterials for biomedical research. Prof. Anton Klok of EPFL (École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne), Switzerland, spoke about the bio-application of polymers.

Yoshikuni Teramoto from Kyoto University, Japan

“I am confident that the delegates participating in the Conference will make significant contributions for the development of science and technology and the deliberations by the peer in the field will enthuse the budding scientists to find new directions for further research culminating in sustainable development of rubber science and technology,” said Prof. Sriman Kumar Bhattacharyya, Director, IIT Kharagpur during his inaugural address.

The Chief Guest for the occasion was Prof. Tony McNally of WMG, who also delivered a plenary lecture at the conference. He mentioned that rubber and polymer composites have been one of the main focus of WMG and there are lots opportunity of collaboration in this field with IIT Kharagpur. The American Chemical Society has been associated with the conference and interacted with authors and young scientists on the last day of the conference.