Medical Technology – The KGP Chronicle

IIT KGP Develops Telemedicine Homecare Technology

IIT Kharagpur Rolls Out Telemedicine Technology for Home Care during COVID Physical Distancing Protocol

It has been more than half the year since the world has been struggling through the challenge thrown by COVID-19. With the passage of time, and vaccines still not being on the cards, the pressure on the healthcare system is only expected to rise while the healthcare workers continue to remain vulnerable to infection. To address this issue, researchers at IIT Kharagpur’s Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering have developed a telemedicine system, iMediX.

The system integrates homecare with healthcare services from the hospital. Considering the emergent needs due to COVID-19 Pandemic, the system facilitates critical health care support to patients at their doorsteps through remote consultation by a physician. The system is accessible by any standard internet browser and also from a mobile device.

In this system, a patient signs up to get an account by providing her Email ID or Mobile number. Then the patient can make a request for consultation by choosing a Department of the hospital, entering her chief complaints and uploading necessary scanned medical records. The hospital administration processes the request and assigns a doctor. The doctor after logging in sets an appointment date and time for the patient and the system communicates the information to the patient by Email and SMS. On the day of the visit, the doctor consults the patient using video conferencing and advises her by writing a prescription, which is sent by Email to the patient. The patient can also download the prescription from her account.

Prof. Jayanta Mukhopadhyay, the lead researcher remarked, “As the number of cases of home isolation and home quarantine are increasing, the system will cater to the needs of the present situation. It would be useful also to follow up and treat aged patients.”

iMediX is being adopted for public use right at its home, IIT Kharagpur on-campus healthcare system.

Director, Prof. V K Tewari stated, “In April we had announced eight R&D projects for providing COVID healthcare services. This telemedicine project was key among them especially keeping in mind its effectiveness in our own community. When our campus will start operating in full strength close to 30000 people including students would be in need of healthcare services and this technology will reduce over-exposure of the healthcare staff while efficiently catering to the population. While we are promoting physical distancing, it seems only appropriate to introduce this digital platform to meet the healthcare needs of the campus community effectively. We are creating user accounts for our medical cardholders who can avail the consultation facility home through video conferencing.”

The software was launched on October 2, 2020, on the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti and will be integrated at the Dr. B. C. Roy Technology Hospital of the Institute which provides emergency healthcare services for the campus residents and employees, confirmed the office of Principal Medical Officer Dr. Samir Dasgupta.

Deputy Director, Prof. S K Bhattacharyya remarked, “I am extremely happy that we are able to launch the telemedicine facility at BCRTH as this was one of our dream projects. Since we have a large number of OPD patients, it will be extremely beneficial to them as movement to the hospital is extremely difficult for them. Also, for our students the waiting time at the hospital will get reduced as this will be very helpful to them.”

Director Tewari further shared his plan to expand the use of this technology to people outside the campus through the upcoming superspeciality hospital of IIT Kharagpur. The researchers are already in touch with healthcare MSMEs for commercialization of the copyrighted version of the technology. A base model was installed at Swasthya Bhawan, Govt. of West Bengal on a trial basis. Field trials are also underway for the base model in Bangladesh.

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Project Contact:

Prof. Jayanta Mukhopadhyay, jay@cse.iitkgp.ac.in

Media Contact:

Shreyoshi Ghosh, shreyoshi@adm.iitkgp.ac.in

For news about IIT Kharagpur visit: https://kgpchronicle.iitkgp.ac.in

New AI Diagnostics for Lung Diseases

AI and IoT based Diagnostic Device for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Diseases developed by IIT Kharagpur

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is a common chronic respiratory disease caused by exposure to harmful gases and particulate matters, with a high health burden on the country’s healthcare services and society. For long, the medical community has been depending on patient history and clinical symptoms for disease diagnosis, which often prevents early detection of the disease and advancing of the disease adds to the medical bill through frequent hospitalizations.

Researchers at IIT Kharagpur have developed an affordable diagnostic intervention for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease based on the internet-of-things medical devices (IoT-MD) integrated with AI. [Download Journal Paper]

At the Organic Electronics Laboratory (ORELA), Department of Physics, IIT Kharagpur, Prof. Dipak Kumar Goswami and his research team have developed SenFlex.T, a smart mask synced with an android monitoring app through Bluetooth, that can continuously monitor breathing patterns, rate, heart rate, oxygen saturation level in blood. The app is connected to a cloud computing server, where artificial intelligence (AI) has been implemented to predict the severity of COPD through machine learning (ML).

“SenFlex.T can be used at home by patients without having to visit diagnostic centres as against the current practice. This will also address the critical issue of addressing COPD at an early stage and by means of advanced healthcare technology, a boon for both patients and the overall healthcare system,” explained Prof. Goswami.

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease has been a top cause of death, second to only deaths due to heart diseases. In 2017 it claimed about 1 million lives in India. In October 2019, health experts, at a medical convention, confirmed that COPD claims more lives than AIDS, TB, Malaria, Diabetes all put together. The threat from COPD has become more acute under the COVID situation, with increased comorbidity rates. A recent survey confirmed that the severity and mortality rates among COPD patients to be affected by the COVID-19 virus are over 63%. Moreover, the patients affected in the COVID-19 virus, which is right now over 4 million people in India and 27 million in the world, are more susceptible to build up various lung disorder-related diseases like COPD, Asthma etc.

“It was crucial for health-tech researchers to develop a diagnostic intervention for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. Spirometry, the gold standard test to diagnose obstructive airway diseases like asthma and COPD, is often avoided due to the unavailability of the equipment, difficulty in data interpretation and the cost of the tests. This challenge and the criticality strongly motivated us to develop an AI-based system, that can overcome the problem of interpreting the results and be accessible not only for the doctors but also for the patients,” said Prof. Goswami.

SenFlex.T smart mask contains a highly sensitive, flexible temperature sensor along with a Bluetooth based measuring electronics. The sensor system can continuously monitor the temperature changes of inhaled and exhaled air during breathing and record the breathing pattern. The temperature sensor has a resolution of 4.3 mK and about 25 ms response time. Further, a commercially available pulse oximeter has been integrated with the sensor system to monitor the oxygen saturation level during breathing.

The patient data is uploaded automatically to the cloud server through the mobile app (SenFlex), where it is processed by means of AIML, and reports made available on the app and for doctors’ consultation.

The innovation has been reported in the international journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces [Download Paper]. The researchers have also filed a patent for the innovation and are ready for commercialization. The product cost has been estimated at about ₹ 2,500/-.

Cite Paper: ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2019, 11, 4, 4193–4202

Publication Date:December 31, 2018

https://doi.org/10.1021/acsami.8b19051

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Project Information: Prof. Dipak Goswami, dipak@phy.iitkgp.ac.in;

Institute Information: Prof. B N Singh, Registrar, registrar@hijli.iitkgp.ac.in;

Media Outreach: Shreyoshi Ghosh, shreyoshi@adm.iitkgp.ac.in

IIT Kharagpur Researchers Develop Painless Drug Delivery and Vaccination Device

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Do invasive medications make you anxious because of the pain? You may not have to worry anymore – microneedles and micropump developed by IIT Kharagpur will enable your medications to be administered in a painless way. Researchers at the Institute’s Dept. of Electronics & Electrical Communication Engineering have developed a micropump and microneedle which are integral parts of transdermal drug delivery systems capable of administering large and viscous drug molecules in a painless way. The innovation will further enable transdermal application of COVID-19 vaccine.

Painless transdermal drug delivery has been a success story for decades in the USA and several other countries. In recent years, in order to expand its scope, the scientific community has been working towards developing microneedles with diameters smaller than a hair strand. The hollow microneedles operate by means of a pressurized and controlled micropump delivering the drug through the skin. The micropump pushes out the drug in the reservoir through the microneedle array. The microneedles are painless as they are too small to touch the nerves in the skin and induce pain reactions.

The innovation by IIT Kharagpur has not only reduced the diameter size of the microneedles but has also increased the strength so that they do not break while penetrating the skin.

Prof. Tarun Kanti Bhattacharyya, Dept. of Electronics & Electrical Communications Engineering

Explaining the novelty of the innovation, lead researcher Prof. Tarun Kanti Bhattacharyya said, “We have fabricated high strength glassy carbon microneedles which can withstand the skin resistive forces. Added to this is our designing of the ionic polymer metal composite membrane based micropump which increases the flow rate of the drug molecules in a controlled and precise manner. We have further integrated this microneedle and micropump to achieve controlled drug delivery.” [Contact Researcher]

3d printed integrated drug delivery device test structure

The microneedles are fabricated using SU-8 precursor and converting them by means of Carbon Microelectromechanical (C-MEMS techniques to glassy carbon microneedles with outer diameter 55 micrometre, inner diameter 35 micrometre. This process further enhanced the quality, strength and biocompatibility of the product with eight-times increased hardness, 4.8 times increased mechanical stiffness (Young’s modulus), 418 times higher compressive strength and 363 times higher bending strength than the skin resistive forces. It showed a flow rate of 0.012 microlitre per second of deionized water at 8 kilopascal. The other segment of the device, the micropump, has been designed as a flat-walled nozzle diffuser made from ionic polymer metal composite membrane with gold coating. This micropump achieved a flow rate of 30 microlitre per minute at 5V square wave at 0.1Hz.

Vaccine applicator

“The device would find extensive use in any form of transdermal medication. A typical use could be achieved in insulin delivery or medication for diseases of the lymphatic system, skin including some forms of cancer, or even COVID-19 vaccine” remarked Prof. Bhattacharyya.

The drug delivery device has been successfully tested with animals as per medical protocol. The researchers have also filed for a patent in India and published the research in IEEE and Nature journals. The research for this innovation was funded by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) and Dept. of Science of Technology, Govt. of India.

Jet issuing out of microneedle at 8 KPa

“The more we engage in multidisciplinary R&D, the better we would be able to produce customized microneedle based effective delivery systems,” he further added, hoping to transform the drug delivery system from the current syringe based one to a painless but effective experience for the patients.

Project Information: Prof. Tarun Kanti Bhattacharyya, tkb@ece.iitkgp.ac.in

Institute Related: Prof. B N Singh, registrar@hijli.iitkgp.ac.in;

Media Outreach: Shreyoshi Ghosh, shreyoshi@adm.iitkgp.ac.in;

More News:: https://kgpchronicle.iitkgp.ac.in/;

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IIT KGP Researchers Design Award-winning for Cardiovascular Device Testing Technology

Researchers from IIT Kharagpur have designed an automated smart device for online testing of cardiac medical devices and prosthetics. The device is capable of creating life-like simulations in cardiac failure cases due to various diseases and tests the performance of implantable devices and prosthetics such as Ventricular assist devices.

The World Health Organization reported 17.9 million deaths in 2016 from cardiovascular diseases (CVD) accounting for about 31% of global deaths. In India, over 28% of the deaths are due to CVD in 2016 according to a study published in 2018. According to the business intelligence company Fior Markets, the global cardiovascular devices market is expected to grow from USD 42.61 billion in 2019 to USD 71.05 billion by 2027, at a CAGR of 6.6% during the forecast period 2020-2027. These devices would include surgical devices as well as diagnostic and monitoring devices covering a large range of CVDs – Cerebrovascular Heart Disease, Stroke, Sudden Cardiac Arrest and Coronary Heart Disease. With rapid development in medical devices, especially for the implants, rigorous testing and assessment are essential during the developmental stage.

“The intriguing complexity of physiology and function of the heart makes it difficult to carry out an in-depth study of the live organ. For researchers, the study of a cadaver heart does not provide many clues regarding its functioning in live conditions. This limitation led us to design a novel heart analogue model, Cardiovascular Replicator (CVR), which can serve as a platform for studying the cardiovascular system,” said lead researcher Prof. Prasanta Kumar Das from the Dept. of Mechanical Engineering.

The Cardiovascular Replicator (CVR) developed by the team is an electromechanical system that can mimic the entire hemodynamics of the human heart along with its pulmonic and systemic circulations.

“The device enables us to simulate a long-range of heart diseases and conditions like aortic valve stenosis, ventricular septal defects, fetal circulation, cross circulation, single ventricle conditions and Fontan correction etc. along with hardware in the loop simulation. We can also run tests prior to animal trials,” said researcher Sumanta Laha.

The design is equipped with sensors and a widescreen display which facilitates online real-time data monitoring and logging. This system is made in a modular way to ease transportation and enable improvisation.

Prof. Indranil Ghosh from the Cryogenic Engineering Centre pointed out the pedagogical advantage of the device for the medical community.

“Cardiovascular Replicator will not only be of great value for researchers working in medical technology innovation but also for medical students during their practical training due to the experiential learning from real-life simulations of the diseases,” he said.

The research has been awarded the prestigious SITARE – Gandhian Young Technological Innovation Award 2020 for this work titled ‘Automated Cardiovascular Replicator for Online Assessment of Cardiac Assist Devices, Prosthetics and Beyond’.

Stepping-up Health Tech

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

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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

Pandemic Healthcare Technologies Underway @IITKGP

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IIT Kharagpur has set up research funding for R&D work related to COVID-19. The Institute submitted a list of projects to the IIT Council last week of which 8 projects have been selected.

Dr Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, Hon’ble Minister, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Govt. of India appreciated and acknowledged the initiative by the Institute on his social media handle congratulating the Director Prof. Virendra Kumar Tewari and his team of researchers.

Talking about the initiative Director Tewari said “It is our responsibility to improve the quality of life of the last person in the society. While we built some quick technologies to cater to the immediate needs of the essential service providers at the campus, we were simultaneously preparing project proposals and evaluating them keeping in mind the immediate need of the country, cost and product delivery period.”

The researchers would be working on several technologies including design and development of rapid diagnostic kit, real-time PCR machine, body suit for COVID-19 patients, personal protective equipment for healthcare workers and portable shredder integrated with sterilizer, Hazmat Suit with forced purified and cooled air circulation for medical professionals, bootstrapping ambu-bag as automated ventilator, telemedicine for fighting viral pandemic, large scale production of recombinant proteins for vaccine and testing.

An amount of Rs. 50 Lakh has been allotted for phase I of 8 projects towards development of prototypes. For most of these projects, the prototypes are expected to be ready within a duration of 3 – 4 weeks, while a couple of them would take about 6 months to deliver the results. The phase I is expected to start immediately after the lockdown is relaxed and the research staff are able to attend the laboratories. Meanwhile software related work would progress as usual.

“IIT Kharagpur has a proven track record towards development of indigenous health and hygiene technologies which are affordable, high-quality at par with globally accepted standards, and commercially viable. Our researchers are committed to deliver the prototypes within a constrained timeline considering the healthcare needs in the current situation,” added Prof. Tewari.

1	Development of smartphone-integrated paper-strip kit for rapid low-cost diagnostics of COVID-19 infection	Prof. Arindam Mondal and Prof. Suman Chakraborty
2	Design and Development of an indigenous Real Time PCR Machine	Prof. Anandaroop Bhattacharya, Prof. Prasanta K. Das, Prof. Suman Chakraborty (ME Dept), with inputs from Dept. of Biotechnology and Physics
3	Towards large scale Production of Recombinant Proteins for Vaccine and Testing of Novel COVID-19	Prof. Sudip K. Ghosh, Prof. Ananta K. Ghosh and Prof. Ramkrishna Sen
4	Bootstrapping the ambu-bag as automated ventilator	Prof. Aditya Bandopadhyay + Faculty and Students from ME Dept
5	Design and Development of a Bodysuit for COVID-19 Patients to Prevent the Spread of Infection	Prof. Nishant Chakravorty
6	Telemedicine for fighting viral pandemic such as COVID-19	Prof. Jayanta Mukhopadhyay
7	A Hazmat Suit with Forced Purified and Cooled Air Circulation for Medical Professionals	Prof. Manoj Kumar Mondal
8	Personal Protective Equipment for Health Care Workers	Prof. Santanu Dhara and Prof. Sangeeta Das Bhattacharya
8.a.	Portable shredder integrated with sterilizer	Prof. Santanu Dhara and Prof. Sangeeta Das Bhattacharya

New Repurposed Drugs & Methodology Identified by IIT Kharagpur Researchers

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Researchers from the School of Medical Science & Technology at IIT Kharagpur have identified new drug repurposing candidates for induction of fetal hemoglobin to treat beta-thalassemia patients

Blood disorders or hemoglobinopathies such as beta-thalassemia and sickle cell anemia affect millions. Drug-induced increase in fetal hemoglobin has been shown to improve the condition of those affected with these blood disorders. But these drugs have side-effects. Scientists are exploring if ‘repurposed’ or existing drugs can be used to treat these disorders. To find out which drugs could be used for possible repurposing the researchers at the Regenerative Medicine Lab at School of Medical Science and Technology of IIT Kharagpur studied the working of microRNAs which regulate the pathways along which the production of fetal hemoglobin is stimulated.

The researchers observed Curcumin, found in turmeric, and Ginsenoside, found in the roots of Ginseng, both known for their medicinal properties, could go a long way in treating blood disorders like thalassemia and sickle cell anemia. These two plant ingredients, together with approved drugs such as Valproate and Vorinostat were found to be ‘most suitable for future clinical trials’.

The researchers also studied how miRNAs work, how they regulate gene expressions and also which chemical molecules affect their expression pattern. The team at SMST used several bioinformatics tools to match differentially expressed miRNAs with differentially expressed genes (as found in publicly available datasets) and identify their pathways. The team has also devised a database called “miRwayDB” to provide comprehensive information of experimentally validated microRNA-pathway associations in various diseases. As many as 19 miRNAs were found to be differentially expressed in those who had high fetal hemoglobin levels in their blood. The team also identified some unique small molecules that strongly affected the expression of those 19 miRNAs.

Of the five molecules identified by the research, three – 5’-aza 2’-deoxycytidine, Valproate and Vorinostat – are commonly used to treat other diseases. For example, Valproate is used to treat seizure disorders in childhood and Vorinstat is an anticancer agent.

“These identified markers expand our understanding of fetal hemoglobin regulatory mechanism and may have importance in designing new therapeutic strategies to reactivate its production in patients with hemoglobin disorders,” said Prof. Nishant Chakravorty, who heads the Regenerative Medicine Lab and the team at SMST.

The study was conducted by Prof. Chakravorty, his student at SMST, Mr. Sankha Subhra Das, and Dr. Rashmi Sinha of IIT Kharagpur’s in-house medical facility B.C. Roy Technology Hospital and published in the “Gene” journal.

“Medical practitioners nowadays widely use repurposed drugs. An example is Sildenafil, which is used to treat impotence in males as well as neonatal pulmonary hypertension,” said Dr. Anish Chatterjee (MBBS, DCH, MD-Paediatrics), Professor, Dr. B C Roy Post Graduate Institute of Paediatric Sciences. Dr Chatterjee believes that research into repurposing of drugs is important and could even lower the cost of medical treatment as cheaper drugs, instead of costly ones presently used, could be used to treat diseases.

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Digital CHAVI for Cancer Cure

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IIT Kharagpur and Tata Medical Center have set up an open architecture image biobank to aid cancer research in the country. Named CompreHensive Digital ArchiVe of Cancer Imaging (CHAVI) it will address the emerging field of imaging-related research and will be India’s first step towards harnessing artificial intelligence and deep learning methods to answer medical questions of importance in the field of image banking.

IIT Kharagpur and Tata Medical Center have been jointly working on several novel educational and research programmes including Masters and Fellowship courses to enable this trans-disciplinary research that marries technology and medicine. The two institutions have joined hands in initiating a pilot project on developing an image data bank for cancer patients, in particular, the present focus is radio oncology. The project has been undertaken by IIT Kharagpur through the National Digital Library Initiative (NDLI) of MHRD. The overarching aim here is to build up a national bank of annotated images with a flexible query interface and link it with a pipeline of radiomic services for furthering radiomic research in large image datasets.

The CHAVI project is the first of its kind. The objective of the National Digital Library of India is to make accessible material for doing research that normally could not have been done in India. With the CHAVI project, as a beginning, we have chosen cancer imaging database along with Tata Medical Center because of their tremendous expertise. Cancer is one of the most dreaded diseases in our country. If we are able to create a very well defined, annotated database, it will help researchers as well as doctors to be able to do early, more accurate diagnosis and provide better treatment for our people which is a lot more cost effective – Prof. Partha Pratim Chakrabarti, Principal Investigator of NDLI.

As a pilot, radiation oncology related images are being banked within the NDLI CHAVI RO project. It is a prototype system which is under development addressing various such issues. It is also being developed considering multi-institutional participation in building a national image data bank.

Once the pilot project is successful, it can be scaled up to a larger set of medical images. Medical imagery can then be combined with AI to enable reach of treatment to more people as well as provide targeted therapy based on individual symptoms. This should enable doctors like never before, and revolutionize the way doctors interact with patients and systems.

AI for the medical vertical has three pillars. Descriptive analysis that will help education – students anywhere in the country can access the bank to look at the images and learn from there. Predictive Analysis will help doctors diagnose better. And then Prescriptive analysis that will help doctors reduce the scope of treatment based on past use cases.

We need more affordable solutions in India for cancer treatment, majority of our patients are middle class and lower middle class and cannot afford genomic analysis. Image banking combined with predictive/prescriptive AI can enable us to identify signatures as a much more cost effective alternative – Dr Sanjoy Chatterjee, Tata Medical Center.

While Tata Medical Center has created a large repository of medical data and images of cancer patients including outcomes of treatment in many cases, there are various challenges while building this system. The first and foremost is in preserving anonymity of patients as well as maintaining adequate referential integrity, a necessity for carrying out useful research.

To enhance the CHAVI project, the two institutions organized a workshop titled – “Structuring a Collaborative National Image Banking Program” on 26th July 2019 at Tata Medical Center, Kolkata, supported by MHRD through the NDLI project. The workshop which was coordinated by Dr. Sanjoy Chatterjee and Prof. Jayanta Mukhopadhyay from IIT Kharagpur involved presentations and panel discussions with experts in medical and Computer Science / AI domains. Several expert doctors from India, USA and UK and specialists in the area of Computer Science from India also took part in the daylong proceedings.

Who said what in the workshop

The scope of image banking is to enable cancer research and move it forward, to access data that is more diverse and come from different centres, different patients and different ethnic groups to help doctors make more informed decisions and deliver personalized treatments – Dr. Emiliano Spezi, Cardiff University, USA

For research, we need geographic distribution – which means we need to build national archives, be it central or distributed and then connect them globally to be truly able to sample the human population – Dr. Fred Prior, UAMS, USA

If you have an image bank where you can collaborate all your images, and then you look at certain features, you can probably come up with information which goes beyond the human eye. Imaging when combined with pathological information can then improve outcomes for our patients – Dr. Simon Pavamani, CMC Vellore

It is a kind of personalized medicine. Where a set of images of a particular kind is treated in a particular way which helps predict a specific treatment for each individual patients – Dr. Subhas Gupta, AIIMS, New Delhi

Health-Tech MSME Hub @IITKgp

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In a new development aligned with the upcoming 400-bed superspecialty hospital at IIT Kharagpur, the Institute is going to set up a Common Research & Technology Development Hub (CRTDH) on Technologies for Affordable Healthcare.

The initiative which is being supported by the Dept. of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR), Government of India, will address the issues of accessibility and affordability challenging the modern healthcare system through technological innovations. Another key area of focus of the Hub will be supporting growth & development of precision manufacturing of innovative technologies through MSMEs so that India can reduce its massive burden of imported healthcare technologies and spread technology available in the last mile.

“Access to quality primary healthcare remains a major challenge in rural parts in India with over 80% of healthcare technology being imported and escalating the cost of delivering healthcare services. Also, the concentration of leading healthcare units being in urban areas lead to accessibility issue,” remarked Dr. Satadal Saha, Visiting Professor at the School of Medical Science and Technology at IIT Kharagpur.

“With more than 45% of rural jobs are created within MSME sector In India and the presence of 5.0 million MSMEs in West Bengal alone, this hub at IIT Kharagpur will unleash the potential of MSMEs in West Bengal and beyond in productizing and commercializing indigenously developed healthcare technologies – solving a major problem for the common people, fostering manufacturing growth, strengthening the MSMEs, creating rural jobs, introducing advanced technologies,” he added.

Various departments of IIT Kharagpur are working on multiple healthcare technologies which can be licensed to the MSMEs. Also, the MSME may also approach the Institute with their own ideas. On completion of successful laboratory tests, scientific validation studies and prototype creation, projects will be undertaken at CRTDH for further product-level development and ethnography. MSMEs will be selected and productization will be assigned to them. The MSMEs will be incubated and trained in the particular technologies till the stage of successful commercialization.

Over the years, IIT Kharagpur has developed niche healthcare technologies and medical devices, out of sustained endeavours in deep scientific and technological research. This Project is eventually aimed towards disseminating the outcome of such high-level research to eventually the population that needs the urgent intervention of quality healthcare services at affordable costs. This requires a sustainable model of transferring our technologies to commercialized products.

“We will endeavour to build capacity within the MSME to enable it to manufacture high-quality products that can compete in the global market and has the potential to scale. We expect to build an ecosystem which will enable the MSMEs to establish the infrastructure and start manufacturing once the product/solution is validated, market size understood and all regulatory barriers are overcome,” said Prof. Suman Chakraborty, Head of School of Medical Science and Technology as well as Associate Dean, Sponsored Research and Industrial Consultancy, IIT Kharagpur, and the Principal Investigator of this ambitious Project.

IITKGP’s Bioelectronics Research to Develop Coin-sized Biological Computers for Medical Treatment

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IIT Kharagpur has set up India’s pioneering Bioelectronics Innovation Laboratory to develop futuristic battery-free implantable medical devices for treatment of brain, nerve, muscle or spinal cord disorders that are untreatable by using standard medical practices.

Bioelectronics is a new and an exciting field in engineering that is yet to make its mark in India. It utilizes the intersecting knowledge of both electronics and biology. Bioelectronic devices generally target to restore missing neural functions, while utilizing energy efficient and miniaturized engineering systems.

“We aim to implant coin-sized electronic chips with wireless energy supply for rehabilitation and prostheses applications. These chips will solve neural connectivity problems that are otherwise unaddressed by latest medical sciences. Our solutions will incorporate a combination of electrical stimulation, bio-potential recording and neuro-chemical sensing. Unlike the standard pace-makers that require a surgery every 5 to 10 years due to limited battery-life, our solutions depend on wireless power transfer and intelligent communication schemes. This will enhance the lifetime of implants and reduce the number of surgical interventions. The programmable chips will help in adopting with varying physiological conditions in patients. The present line of research targets subjects with blindness, limb paralysis, sensory-motor dysfunction, cognition-loss, Parkinsons tremor, epileptic seizures, and even memory loss. The novel bioelectronic devices will be able to sense bio-signals, process information to make intelligent decisions, and control diseased organs by electrical methods” explained Prof. Sudip Nag from the Department of Electronics and Electrical Engineering who is heading this initiative at IIT Kharagpur.

The proposed medical devices will help in realizing highly affordable and reliable medical solutions that are accessible to the common population in India and the world. The laboratory will facilitate energy efficient electronic system development, biocompatible packaging, bio-reliability assessment and animal testing rooms as a unified platform for an end-to-end intelligent medical system development. Grants have been received from IIT Kharagpur, under MHRD Imprint program, SFTIG Indo-Canadian Fellowship grant etc. It is in the process of setting up collaborations with several hospitals and institutes in India and abroad.

In addition to innovating new medical devices, the laboratory will open new career avenues in incubating companies for production and marketing and also create an international supply base for medical devices giants like Medtronic, Boston Scientific, Advanced Bionic, Second Sight and Saint Jude’s Medical, opined Prof. Nag. “We are looking forward to technology licensing and commercialization of bioelectronic devices that are being developed in this laboratory,” he said.