Each year, billions of dollars are invested in R&D by various global companies to find new cures for ailments. But these advanced medical facilities are out of reach for people from economically weak backgrounds, especially the majority of rural population in India. There is a serious shortage of inexpensive medical care devices designed for use in rural areas. This leads to prevalence of untreated diseases and occurrence of lakhs of avoidable deaths each year.

We found that disease in rural areas was twice that of urban areas. Globally, India ranked among the bottom five countries with the lowest public health spending. According to World Bank, 68% of India’s population lives in its villages; of which more than 50% were living in poverty. As of 2014, 58% of the country’s population was living on less than $3.10 per day. India had 17.5% of the world’s population and was responsible for 21 per cent of the world’s burden of disease.

India had only 7 doctors for 10,000 people. The rural population suffers the most because of this as they don’t have the money to afford proper medical attention in the cities. There is lot of innovation that has improved the detection of ailments in the developed countries. Only the top 10–20% of the rich people in India can only afford this advanced medical care. Till the time that universal healthcare are available in India where everyone has access to insurance, low cost devices are the only option to treat the masses.

Affordable technology needs to penetrate the remote corners of India and empower Primary and Community Health Care Centre’s which is the backbone of the rural health system. You won’t believe that the majority of the India’s 63 million diabetics and 2.5 million cancer patients haven’t been diagnosed yet. Without the latest technology, the rural population will be deprived of simple and early detection of numerous diseases. All the efforts will be wasted, even if technologically advanced healthcare facilities is available as it will out of the common man’s financial reach.

The team members who worked on this project were Guruswamy Revana, Pratima Kumari and Vijay Krishnamurthy. Dr. Praveen Haranath, a doctor at one of the hospitals which partnered for the Devthon also was part of the team from the design to the prototyping stages.

The goal was to create a simple device that can be used by a novice to rapidly diagnose lung capacity. It can be done without appointment with the doctor, while adhering to Indian clinical and health standards.

The prototype is built with inexpensive and readily available components. The core component is a transducer, converts force into electrical voltages.

The pressure at which an adult blows into our low cost peak flow meter is captured and the relevant digital value is calculated, and is displayed on the Liquid Crystal Display (LCD).

This device can be used by patients who areasthmatic, bronchitis affected and chain smokers for rapid diagnosis of the measurable lung capacity. The system consists of a bluetooth module which connects to a mobile phone for data storage. The mobile app facilitates communication between patient and doctor.

This device is able to diagnose limited ailments with its current features. It can be upgraded to allow for advanced features to be added to it keeping the price of the device constant. This will make sure that this device becomes a must have for all primary healthcare centre’s across India. Then this device could become mainstream and will be in high demand for personal use in urban areas.

The device could also have the ability to rapidly diagnose the exact ailment using the data and if required cross check it with a doctor virtually. When this device can be used by a person safely without supervision, there arise numerous possibilities for taking this device to the remotest of areas in the country. This will connect with virtual healthcare to bring down travel and medical costs for the users. Therefore, the device can not only become more user-friendly, but its design has immense scope for improvement.

Healthcare is a right that needs to be available for all. This device can be further improved to monitor the patient’s breathing in case of an emergency. This device also has potential to grow into an integrated monitoring device that could detect and diagnose most or all of the respiratory ailments. Advanced technology is already out there to detect respiratory diseases, but it has be simplified and added to this cost-effective device, thereby reaching millions of Indians.

To share your ideas and participate, check our Initiatives page.

Originally Published on April 05, 2016

Did you know that the knee is the largest joint in the body, and one of the most easily injured?

Among Indians, one of the most common injuries is Anterior Cruciate Ligament tear that affects the knee. ACL is also responsible for providing almost 90% of the stability to the knee joint.

Our goal was to create a device that could accurately measure the pressure being applied to the knee. The perfect device would be user friendly and provide the right information to the user, so that he/she could take the appropriate remedial action and avoid further damage to the knee.

Before the prototyping started, we tried to understand the basic working of the knee. So the knee is a joint that is formed by three bones: Femur (the long bone extending down from the hip); Tibia (the bone between the knee and ankle); and Patella (the kneecap). These bones are joined together by a number of ligaments. Two ligaments crisscross in the joint from the femur to the tibia and are called cruciate ligaments (cruciate means cross). The one towards the front of the leg is called the Anterior Cruciate Ligament.

In 2015, Lionel Messi had a Medial Collateral Ligament tear and needed 2 months to recover.

It was mostly prevalent in sports like skiing, athletics, basketball, soccerwhich includes lots of stop-and-go movements, jumping, or weaving. The fact was that 60–80% of ACL tears occur without contact with another athlete. This could happen when you are changing direction rapidly, slowing down when running, and changing speed while running or landing from a jump. We also found that according to the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, ACL injuries are two to ten times more likely to occur in female athletes than in male athletes.

Famous athletes who have had ACL tears included Yuvraj Singh and Tiger Woods. We also got to know that ACL tears often occurs in sports but is seen commonly in people who are maintain a highly active lifestyle. Those above the age of 40, who walk and jog just to keep healthy are also equally prone to ACL.

The major disadvantage with ACL tears and similar ligament injuries was that they showed up in an aggravated stage after many months or years. Once you have diagnosed an ACL injury, it could take six to nine months to return to normal activity.

The global self care medical device market will be valued at $16.9 billion globally in 2019. This includes the sale of Blood Glucose Monitors, Pedometers, Sleep Apnea Monitors and Nebulizers. As technology has advanced, more people are demanding to receive at-home care, and the demand for self-medication is increasing. Conditions that require lifelong monitoring will definitely require self-care devices that can be easily adopted to save time and money.

Every year, more than 50,000 people in India undergo ACL surgery. Also we knew that ACL surgery is expensive and cannot be afforded by a large population in India. The actual population suffering from various degrees of ACL tears in India is close to 10,00,000.

Technology could also come to the the rescue of animals. Dogs, cats and horses are prone to injuries similar to ACL tears. By preventing these injuries with early diagnosis, surgery can be avoided saving between $2000 to $5000 per incident.

Two bright minds came together to solve this problem, in the form of Shiva Sharma and Tadichetty Nihar. They were also assisted by Dr. Vipin who helped them in the process of goal-setting and execution.

The Idea was creating a wearable device that detects the amount of force acting upon our knee, depending upon the force that acts and the comparison between the obtained values and the ranges of standard thresholds of an ACL it can give the probable grade of tear caused.

The device consisted of piezoelectric sensors which are fabricated accordingly to avoid any damage to the sensors and to pick up the vibrations effectively. An array of sensors was used for effective detection. The piezoelectric sensors were calibrated by applying known amount of force on it and by measuring the corresponding voltage drops across the piezoelectric.

The prototype was made by integrating the entire circuit onto a knee cap. The device is currently powered by a universal Serial Bus cable (USB). The entire circuit has a potential to be reduced into a Printed Circuit Board (PCB) and can be powered by a button cell to make it more wearable.

“Technology, like art, is a soaring exercise of the human imagination.” — Daniel Bell

The ideal situation would be where the ACL tear can be detected at an early stage. This is the goal that many designers, developers and doctors around the world are working towards.

But as of now we have been able to detect the pressure that is being applied on the knee. This device can be improved to a great extent. In the future it can become a device that can worn throughout the day. It could be connected to a mobile device and show the information as a notification as when a particular threshold is crossed. This will ensure that a damaged knee has the proper care while participating in strenuous physical events and especially while recovering.

The issue is that many people have trouble with their knee and keep ignoring until it becomes unbearable. Their gait or walking style is altered when they have a niggle in the knee but they keep walking in that manner for a long time. This leads to the condition becoming worse. This device will also need to analyze the moving of the limbs and suggest corrections. It must become a one stop self care device to measure knee problems in the early stage and suggesting solutions.

To share your ideas and participate, check our Initiatives page.

Originally Published on April 05, 2016

As of 2011, there were 26 million disabled people in India, out of which 18 million were in rural India. Anybody can be affected by disability irrespective of their race, nationality or gender. Other than the physical trauma that comes with disability, there is also psychological trauma that is caused to the disabled person having to completely depend on a caregiver for every small thing. This often leads to depression in the disabled person.

Caregivers are also under immense pressure to ensure that all the needs of the disabled person are met. They are responsible for assisting the disabled in performing routine activities such as eating, bathing, changing clothes, changing their posture and moving from one location. Giving the power to the disabled person to control some amount of their activities makes them happier and also decreases the pressure on the caregiver.

At the 2015 BioAsia Devthon, B.H.V Manikanta Swamy, Vijaya Bhaskar and Sharath Chandra teamed up to create an interesting prototype that was declared the winner of the event.

• They idea was to create a cost-effective device that could help disabled people manage their food without help from a caregiver. There were already competing products in the market, but they were quite expensive and out of reach for those who needed it most.
• The primary users of this product were those suffering from high-level spinal cord injuries, cerebral palsy, and muscular diseases. Including those afflicted with cerebral palsy who cannot move their arms and hands. Their upper limbs are not fully functional but their feet were absolutely normal.
• The first prototype was a manually operated mechanical device that can be operated using the feet only. The device works similar to that of a robotic arm. There are five movements that it is capable of executing: flexion, extension, abduction, adduction and rotation.
• They used a DC geared motors along with some electronics components for power supply and supporting hardware material. They also added several features to perfect the product even further. The food container can now rotate so that food can be mixed easily. It can also collect the food from any place of the bowl and the table’s height can be adjusted.

The Indian market for disability and assisting devices and technologies is pegged at Rs 4,500 crores. This feeding device prototype has numerous possibilities for improvement. The robotic controls which it uses can be improved to a higher level of precision. It could also be connected with a mobile phone which could become the one stop control centre for the device. Also cameras could be used to calculate the distance and relay the information to the robotic arms.

“Technology should be like oxygen, ubiquitous, necessary, and invisible.” — Chris Lehmann

This device also has possibilities to be tied to connected technology using the Internet of Things. So that a person can use voice commands to start the movement of the feeder without any physical contact itself. It can also be connected to a number of other devices so that even without the presence of a caregiver, a disabled person can manage all their food consumption on time.

The self feeding feeder will spark off a lot of different ideas to create products that will empower disabled people without motor skills. Thus empowering them to get their needs completed without any physical or psychological strain. The end goal will always remain to ensure that technology becomes a partner in the day to day activities of a disabled person without being obtrusive.

To share your ideas and participate, visit our Initiatives page.

Originally Published on April 05, 2016