Staff Reporter
GUWAHATI, Jan 17: An innovation developed by a team from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati has been accepted at the global-level Charm Health Innovation Challenge.
Mitali Basak, a third year PhD scholar of the Center for Nanotechnology of IIT Guwahati, along with Dr Shirsendu Mitra, a former PhD scholar at the Department of Chemical Engineering of IIT Guwahati (presently an Early Career Fellow at IIT Gandhinagar) teamed up to develop a digital health system to take healthcare to larger populations in remote areas.
They participated in the competition under the category of ‘Student Innovators’ and submitted an idea of a bench top digital setup integrated with an algorithm to record initial screening parameters like body temperature, pulse rate, eye and tongue analysis of a patient remotely.
“A situation like COVID demands human interactions to be as minimal as possible. In view of this, the current innovation serves as a potential tool for healthcare management remotely, taking care of physical as well as social distancing norms. The device developed by the scholars is capable of remotely doing primary health check-up. Further, a robust algorithm along with cloud interfacing is expected to enable the device to store large volumes of health data for future benefit,” said a statement issued by IIT Guwahati.
The winners of the competition will be decided after submission of a prototype based on the proposed innovation.
Basak and Dr Mitra are working on the prototype which is expected to be ready within the next four months.
The innovation challenge includes a cash prize of US $ 2,500 for the top two winners.
Apart from this, once the winning innovation is fully developed, its commercialisation will be taken forward by the organisers.
Charm Health Innovation challenge is a digital healthcare focused technology competition organised by two California (USA)-based organisations, Charm Health and iValley. It is a platform for innovators and entrepreneurs to showcase their innovative technological solutions and new business models of healthcare, Artificial Intelligence assisted patient care, remote monitoring incorporating Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality (AI/VR) and Natural language processing (NLP), wearables and devices.
It involves identifying a focus area from telehealth and telemedicine, digital therapeutics and new business models, tech-led innovations, healthcare analysis, m-Health, and billing and fitness, and submitting a written proposal of the solution.
