Indian Innovators (16 page)

“So, even if there is no mobile internet, the health worker can save several patients’ data, which will be uploaded when she reaches a location where wireless or other internet connectivity is available. Once the data is uploaded, the app has built-in analytics to ascertain if any of the tested parameters are out of the safety range. The data is also immediately available to the doctor who is monitoring that patient. Thus, the system provides patients with remote access to the doctor.

The community health workers can charge a small fee, around
100, for testing services. This would earn them a good livelihood. Also, the doctors can monitor patients remotely for a very small lump sum fee, say a couple of thousands, for the entire pregnancy. By paying
10,000 to access the CareMother platform, doctors can increase their reach, that too with little additional burden on their clinic/ hospital infrastructure or their time. Moreover, because patients usually go to the same doctor for delivery who has been advising them during pregnancy, there is an added incentive for doctors.

Owing to a stressful life that requires balancing the home and workplace, more and more urban women are falling prey to pregnancy-related complications. The system comes to the rescue of urban mothers as well. Educated women can use the kit to perform the tests on their own and upload the data using their smartphones. Thus, they need not make frequent trips to the lab and the doctor; this saves time and helps them avoid the discomfort of urban travel during pregnancy.

The patient’s history is recorded in the app and can easily be accessed by the physician whenever required. The app also provides important information to mothers on nutrition, exercise and family planning; informs the mother when she should visit her doctor; and lets patients use a scale to quantify the intensity of symptoms such as morning sickness or pain for the doctor to assess. Moreover, for other relevant information, the patient can even choose to leave voice messages for the doctor. Currently, the app can be accessed in three languages – Hindi, English and Marathi. We are in the process of adding more Indian languages to it.

We have put a lot of things together in a way that allows us to address the needs of pregnancy care very effectively.”

In early 2013, the CareMother team started a pilot program in association with Doctors For You (DFY), a pan- India humanitarian organization which focuses on providing medical care to vulnerable communities during crisis and non-crisis situations. CareMother had 100 patients within four months, 10 of which belonged to the high-risk category. This helped them get user feedback.

The response was amazing. DFY found the system so easy and useful that the pilot program that started at one of their centers was extended to others. Soon, several organizations from across the country started approaching us.”

NGOs such as Pragya from Jammu and Kashmir and Sri Sathya Sai Central Trust, Andhra Pradesh, as well as private hospitals such as Kamineni Hospitals, Hyderabad, have expressed the desire to use CareMother to reach out to rural patients in their respective areas.

Government departments are not far behind. Sector Wide Approach to Strengthen Health (SWASTH), a healthcare initiative by the Bihar Government, has approached the CareMother team for help. Non-profit healthcare research organizations such as Health Management and Research Institute (HMRI) have also sought a partnership.

The project has received international acclaim as well. The UK government awarded a grant to the CareMother team under the UK–India Education and Research Initiative. The grant enabled the team to travel to the UK and network with leading experts on m-health (heath care delivery via mobile technologies).

“In the UK, the government-funded National Health System (NHS) is under severe pressure due to demand–supply gap. Therefore, even advanced countries such as the UK are looking to m-health for better healthcare delivery.”

CareMother was also awarded a gold medal under the DST–Lockheed Martin India Innovation Growth Program. The team received mentorship from Stanford Business School and a chance to meet investors in Silicon Valley. They were also chosen to be part of a USAID–FICCI innovation support program called Millennium Alliance.

In September 2013, they were adjudged the winners under the Public Service category at the 2013 Yahoo! Innovation Jockey. The Yahoo! homepage saluted their efforts to make life better for mothers around the world.

About 30 million pregnancies occur in India annually, of which almost 75% are in rural areas. Therefore, the CareMother team plans to reach out to the 150,000 rural health care centers spread over 5,000
talukas
in India over the next four years.

They also plan to add other m-health offerings such as CareChild, a similar product aimed at preventing early childhood diseases and deaths. (India also leads the world in the number of deaths of children below 5 years of age, accounting for a quarter of the worldwide figure.)

The team also plans to revive past projects for commercialization. Dr Shital Somani and Vaibhav now handle technology commercialization and business development for the company. They are also considering using their expertise in solar energy to implement a charging system for the CareMother kit.

With young and determined social technopreneurs at the helm, the future of rural India is bound to change for the better.

Chinmay Deodhar

Dual-Purpose Laparoscopic Surgery Instrument

It is foolhardy to expect an automotive engineer to create a high-precision surgical instrument. But not if that automotive engineer happens to be Chinmay Deodhar!

Despite having no formal background in medical sciences, Chinmay developed an instrument that eases a surgeon’s work during the skill-intensive laparoscopic surgery.

Laparoscopic surgery, also called minimally invasive or keyhole surgery, is a modern technique in which abdominal surgeries are performed through small incisions, 5-10 mm in diameter.

Trocar, a three-edged triangular medical device with a hollow tube and a seal, is placed through the incisions. The trocar then functions as a portal for subsequent insertion of other specially designed (with diameters of less than 5 mm) instruments into the body cavity for specific purposes, such as viewing, cutting, grasping and cauterizing (sealing a blood vessel via the application of heat).

Doctors use a sophisticated camera with an inbuilt light source, called the laparoscope, to access a magnified view of the body cavity while performing the surgery. Thus, laparoscopy requires very good hand-eye coordination and great surgical precision.

Usually, only one instrument can be inserted at a time through a trocar. Thus, the doctor may make multiple incisions if various tools are to be used together, or may need to pull one tool out to insert another.

This process can be time-consuming, tedious and exhausting. It also endangers the patient, because the doctor’s focus is more on removing and reinserting different tools than on the procedure.

Surgeons across the world face this challenge daily while performing laparoscopic surgical procedures. However, 25-year-old Chinmay Deodhar’s efforts may soon provide a much-needed solution.

Chinmay was born and brought up in Pune. His father, a software professional, instilled a passion for technology in him. While Chinmay was always a bright student, he excelled at chess too and played the game at the state level, before the IIT bug bit him.

Chinmay was keenly interested in designing mechanical objects. He excelled at wood crafting in school, and even made a wooden Ackermann Steering Mechanism (a very famous steering system) at that time.

Thus, after acing the IIT-JEE in 2005, and despite having a plethora of options, he chose a new course being offered at IIT Madras that year – a dual-degree program comprising a Bachelor of Technology degree in Engineering Design and Masters of Technology in Automotive Engineering.

“The course was multidisciplinary and offered a chance to learn a lot about electronics, mechanical engineering, material science and industrial design. The moment I read about the course description in the counseling brochure, I knew that this was the course for me. The design part entailed a lot of clay modeling and sketching, and was thus a good cross between science and arts. Thus, the course fostered a lot of creativity.

In the first couple of years at IIT, we were exposed to the world of programming and software development. In those days, most phones ran Java-based applications and games. I had a Nokia 6233 and used to play Macromedia Flash-based animated games on it.

During the summer break of the second year, I came back to Pune. A lot of my friends who were nearing their graduation were eagerly preparing for the GRE to go to the US for higher studies. Some of them had even enrolled at Dilip Oak’s Academy, which is a leading institute in Pune for GRE/GMAT preparation.”

Preparing for the GRE requires memorizing a lot of words for vocabulary-based questions. Flash cards are often used for this, each of which contains the word, its pronunciation, meaning, usage and a methodology to remember it.

“I thought that if the vocabulary flash cards could be made available through a mobile phone application, people would be able to carry the cards with them easily and go through them anywhere, at any time.

Over the next few days, I developed a crude version of the game, which had information on just a few words.” Chinmay named the application
Quickword.

“Once the first version was ready, I decided to pitch the idea to Dilip Oak and see if he would be interested in buying it for his students.”

Even though it was a demo version, Dilip Oak was more than impressed and offered to buy the fully developed version for
1.5 lakh.

“I was thrilled.
1.5 lakh is a huge amount of money when you are in college. I realized that if you applied your knowledge to develop solutions that help make people’s life easier, you can earn a lot of money. So, the entrepreneur in me started taking root.

A few months later, around mid-2007, many mobile companies announced internet data plans as cheap as 10 kb for 10 paise. Along with a friend, I started developing a J2ME application, named Lypas, which would let a user send an SMS to any other Lypas user, much like what Whatsapp and other such applications do today. 10 kb would permit sending as many as 100 short messages, making the communication almost free.

While we were still working on Lypas, we learned about IIM Ahmedabad’s iAccelerator program and applied for it.” iAccelerator is a technology business incubation program offered by IIM Ahmedabad’s Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE).

A few weeks later, to our surprise, we were selected for iAccelerator. It was almost like a dream come true. Under the program, we were taught the basics of accounting and start-up financing at IIM Ahmedabad and had interactive sessions with several successful technology entrepreneurs.”

However, that venture did not take off, because distributing the app was difficult. “Unlike today, there was no app store back then and the penetration of internet-enabled phones was low. Thus, despite the availability of cheap, low- speed internet data plans, internet consumption on phones was hardly taking off. Downloading the app on the PC and then transferring the file to the phone via Bluetooth or data cable for installation was a painful task that only a few users were ready to undertake.”

Chinmay moved on to other interests. “In the fourth year of my engineering degree, I began a six-month industrial training at Precision Automation & Robotics India Limited (PARI) in Pune, a company that specializes in manufacturing industrial automation systems for the automotive industry.”

At that time, the company was entering the medical devices arena and Chinmay was assigned to visit hospitals and observe laparoscopic procedures. He was to study the instruments used, in order to gather technical know-how on their design and fabrication.

“On the very first hospital visit, I watched a laparoscopic abdominal cancer operation. I was surprised that there were four types of graspers alone. It was easy to realize that the surgeons had difficulties replacing one instrument with the other.

As I delved deeper, I got hooked to the subject. I spent the rest of the internship trying to understand different aspects of the instruments’ design and usage. One of my uncles, a laparoscopic surgeon in Pune, guided me on the finer aspects of instrument design and the problems faced by surgeons.

All this while, I wondered if two or more instruments could be combined into one. Initially, I wanted to combine the cauterizer, scissors and grasper. However, with further research, I realized that it would be difficult to do that, because other tissues that are not to be cauterized need to be shielded from the heat via insulation.”

It was decided that the most feasible solution would be to combine a grasper and scissors.

“The design was ready by the end of April 2010 and I got it prototyped via 3D printing. Over the next few months, I received feedback on the instrument from several surgeons and refined it further. In June 2010, just after graduating from IIT Madras, I filed for a provisional patent through a Pune-based lawyer.”

Chinmay now wanted to license the intellectual property (IP) of the device to a big medical devices company. “However, I had no idea how I could go about selling my IP and who the likely buyers would be.

Through extensive Google searches and a few industry insiders, I came to know about a small town in south Germany, Tuttlingen. It is a town of just 33,000 people, but 50% of the world’s surgical instruments are made here. About 600 companies in Tuttlingen, ranging from one-man operations to multinationals, specialize in surgical instruments.”

Chinmay did not know anybody who could connect him to the senior managers of these companies, but he did not want to give up. Therefore, he decided to go to Germany and contact them on his own.

“I had secured a job at the automotive division of Eaton, a Pune-based conglomerate, via campus placements. The job was to start in August. Meanwhile, I had some time and decided to go to Germany. Luckily, my parents supported me and helped with the finances.

One of my cousins lived in Basel, Switzerland, which is just a two-hour train ride from Tuttlingen. I stayed with him and bought a bicycle. Every day, I would cycle to the Basel train station and take the train to Tuttlingen. At Tuttlingen, I would mount the bicycle once again. I would then go looking for the offices of the companies whose locations I had marked on a Google map printout that I carried with me.

I would knock at the door of the so-called
Medizin Techniks
and introduce myself to whoever answered. People in Germany are accustomed to receiving people with a proper appointment, so most of the time, I was turned down immediately. However, some people would take me in out of curiosity that some “young lad” had traveled all the way from India to try and sell a patent.

A few of them gave me a chance to explain the novelty of the product, how it works, how it would benefit the surgeons and the financials involved. Though they would give me just five minutes, once I began, they would be so engrossed that the meeting would easily stretch to half an hour or so.

In a few weeks, I managed to reach out to about 40 companies, but only four or five of them showed any interest.

One of them, instead of purchasing the patent, offered me a job. However, I had to decline the offer because that was not my aim. Another company wanted to apply for the German government’s Fraunhofer Grant to help with the commercialization of the product, which was a long-drawn and uncertain process.

At one of the companies, where I was not allowed to meet anyone from the management, I had just left my card and other details at the reception. I never expected the card or the details to reach the concerned person, and thus, almost forgot about it. However, as luck would have it, I received a mail from them the same week, expressing profound interest. It was a mark of recognition and gave me a lot of confidence that my product was worth the effort that I spent on it.

They called me for a meeting and were visibly impressed. However, they wanted me to prepare a to-scale model of the device in surgical stainless steel before they could make a further decision.

So, I came back to Pune and started to work on the to-scale model. I also joined my job at Eaton. With the job, I could work on the model only on the weekends, which slowed the progress considerably. Meanwhile, I received news that I had been chosen for the Stanford India Biodesign Fellowship.”

Funded by the DBT at the Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India, the Stanford India Biodesign (SIB) Fellowship Program is a one-year research program administered in collaboration with IIT Delhi, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and Stanford University, USA. The program is run in partnership with the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF) and aims to develop the next generation of medical technology innovators in India. Fellows work in a multidisciplinary team, joining other innovators from engineering, medical and business backgrounds to help solve healthcare-related problems. They spend the first six months at Stanford University and the next six months in India.