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Researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras have developed a polycentric prosthetic knee to improve the quality of life for people who have had aboveknee amputations. Kadam, the polycentric knee for the above-knee prostheses, was developed in partnership with the Society for Biomedical Technology and Mobility India. A team at the IIT Madras’s TTK Center for Rehabilitation Research and Device Development (R2D2), which also created and marketed the standin wheelchair Arise and the active wheelchair and motorised add-on NeoFlyNeoBolt for indoor-outdoor mobility, produced Kadam. R2D2 is engaged in research on human movement as well as the creation of assistive…
Around 30 lakh (3 million) people died from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in 2019, making it the third largest cause of mortality glob- A significant portion of these cases also originate in undeveloped, isolated regions with poor access to medical treatment. Some of the causes for the prolonged time it takes to diagnose respiratory illnesses are mostly related to a lack of knowledge and societal barriers to seeing a doctor or other health professional. As pulmonary function tests cannot be performed at primary care level centres due to a lack of staff competence and lab resources, screening for respiratory…
Organs damaged by disease or engineering focuses on tissue and orinjury can be replaced with gan regeneration. Bioinks are tailored healthy organs from donors to the tissue being transplanted and drawbacks to transplantation, including the threat of infection, the scarcity of donated organs, and the possibility of rejection by the recipient’s immune system. This has inspired tissue engineers to create risk-free lab-based substitutes. The development of 3D printing technology in recent years has made it possible to fabricate intricate parts layer compatible substances like a hydrogel. The scaffolds are 3D printed, keeping structural and functional compatibility with human tissues, ranging…
In 2011, Neha and her husband, Rahul Rastogi faced a personal emergency. Rahul’s father was admitted to the hospital after complaining of a heavy feeling in his chest. Tests showed that he had been on the brink of a massive heart attack. Every time he felt uneasiness, Rahul would have to rush him to a hospital, sometimes in the wee hours of the morning. Every episode of chest pain used to scare them and they would worry if it was something severe. That near-crisis and the stress of regular follow-up tests after the angioplasty made the couple, Rahul and Neha…
Vinay Kumar lived in a remote village in western UP where the health facilities were not up to the mark. He was diagnosed with a chronic condition called juvenile diabetes at the age of 14 when his mother noticed that he was losing weight. He was required to take daily insulin injections to manage his illness. But there was no doctor or testing facility in his village. The only doctor available was two-and a-half hours away from his village. No one in his family had even heard about juvenile diabetes until that point. Similar to Vinay, millions of people suffer…
During the second wave of coronavirus infection in India earlier this year, oxygen therapy became crucial for severe patients with hypoxemia — a condition when oxygen levels in the blood are critically low. But we witnessed an acute shortage of medical oxygen in different parts of the country, from big cities to rural India. The crisis in bigger cities was more about overcoming supply chain limitations, while in smaller cities and villages, the crisis exposed a lack of medical oxygen infrastructure. According to experts, India produces enough oxygen, at a little over 7,000 tons a day. Most of the oxygen…
Sanitation workers across the nation are working on the frontlines during the pandemic. These workers, mainly the manual scavengers, are highly exposed to all kinds of domestic and hazardous waste. Manual scavenging, also called manhole cleaning, is one of the biggest problems in India and one of the worst professions in the world. The working and living conditions of these scavengers are horrific, with dire consequences on their health. There are about 1.8 lakh people in the country working as manual scavengers. Most of them die from inhaling poisonous gases accumulated inside manholes, oxygen depletion, heat stress or from falling…
The year 2020 proved to be a testing time globally, affecting the very existence of humanity as coronavirus attacked not just health but livelihood too. As lockdown of countries restricted movement, many healthcare providers had to take recourse to the digital medium to reach out to patients, dealing with not just COVID-19 but other general health issues as well. Amid the pandemic, the availability of ICU beds became a challenge globally. In India, the lack of ICU beds was a major concern even before the pandemic. Most of the beds are concentrated in the private sector, with substantial variation in…
Health care systems in India need a big boost as they are poorly managed. A lot of changes are required whether it is urban or rural, public or private health care. Lakhs of children and pregnant women die every year due to lack of accessibility to diagnose anaemia. To fight this issue, Biosense Technologies, a Mumbai-based medical technology organisation developed a portable gadget called ToucHb. ToucHb is a battery operated device that screens anaemia. The device measures the count without the prick of a needle. It is a hand-held needle-free battery operated haemoglobin estimation device that gives instant readings. With…
This year has been deemed as the most encouraging and pathbreaking for the technological innovations that came in to solve the problems of the common man. And one such innovation that has been brought forward by the Chandigarh based Central Scientific Instruments Organization (CSIO), a constituent unit of the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) is Divya Nayan. Divya Nayan is a personal reading machine for visually impaired or illiterate people to access printed or electronic textual information in the form of speech output. It is one of the technologies designed and developed by CSIR-CSIO, Chandigarh and manufactured by…