Infosys awardee brings health testing for last-mile population
By Our Special Correspondent
New Delhi, December 6: Professor Suman Chakraborty, an Infosys prize awardee, is reaching out with a slew of technologies to community health-workers to help them deliver healthcare support to last-mile populations. He launched the outreach in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Professor Chakraborty and his associates developed a nucleic-acid based Rapid Diagnostic Test for infectious disease detection called COVIRAP, which is a substitute for the resource-intensive RT-PCR for testing of infectious diseases. “The technology has been transferred to several companies and organizations. It can be used for any infectious disease detection by suitably customizing and preprogramming the device as per the specific test protocol, with no need of changing the hardware,” said the Ministry of Science and technology in an official statement.
The group also developed diagnostics with finger-prick blood on paper strip, an ultra-low-cost, rapid extreme point-of-care device, which can quantitatively measure plasma glucose, hemoglobin, creatinine, and lipid profile from finger-prick blood collected on a paper-strip via a smartphone-based app. This can be used for mass screening of several non-communicable diseases at the grass root level, added the Ministry.
Additionally, Professor Chakraborty led group also developed a low-cost portable hand-held imaging device for early screening of oral cancer on the basis of measured changes in the blood flow rate of the tissue from thermal imaging and analytics has been developed by the group. “It does not require any clinical infrastructure. This portable device can be used for early risk assessment and categorization of the stages of oral cancer and this method can be extended to other forms of cancer. The device has successfully passed Phase-I clinical trial and has entered into field trial mode,” added the Ministry.
Besides, the group led by Professor Chakraborty has also developed a portable spinning disc capable of testing several body fluid-based diagnostic parameters from a single drop. “The technology for measuring Complete Blood Count (CBC) using this platform, was designed and validated. An electrochemical sensor has been integrated for reading out the test results. It is designed to be a substitute of the laboratory centrifuge for diagnostic testing,” added the Ministry.
The group has developed a folded paper-kit for evaluating antibiotic resistance, which is a growing challenge. The kit helps assess the susceptibility of the bacteria to a medicine, simply by tracking the color changes at marked test-spots on it. In this way, within 3-4 hours, a recommendation on the efficacy of specific drugs for killing the bacteria may be arrived at, facilitating life-saving timely clinical decision making.
A reagent-free anemia detection technology they have developed harnesses on the fact that blood forms unique patterns while spreading on a moist paper strip. The pattern carries the signature of the red blood cell contents in a manner that those for anemic and normal patients may be classified and interpreted to be grossly different when analyzed via a custom-made image-analytics App. This can quickly classify at-risk patients needing emergent blood transfusion or other life saving measures.
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