Sonam Rana updated Content Curator updated
Content Curator updated
New Delhi: IIT Madras Researchers have partnered up with the National Health Mission of Tamil Nadu to improve the newborn and maternal health. This is in reference to the crucial fact that Neonatal Health and Maternal Health are extremely important for increasing equity and reducing poverty, leading to solving larger economic, social and developmental challenges.
The IIT Madras team at the Centre of Excellence on Virtual Reality (VR) and Haptics, called Experiential Technology Innovation Centre (XTIC), identified the problem that skill training of the health workers was a major issue, being faced by India, especially in the rural settings.
Dr. Darez Ahamed, IAS, Mission Director, National Health Mission Tamil Nadu, released the ‘SmartNRP Project’ at IIT Madras on April 19, 2022. This is for the rural healthcare workers to reduce the Maternal Mortality Rate (NMR). Professor V. Kamakoti, Director, IIT Madras, Professor Mahesh Panchagnula, Dean (Alumni and Corporate Relations), IIT Madras, Professor M. Manivannan, Head of XTIC, Dr. J. Kumudha, an expert Neonatologist and other stakeholders were also present during the launching ceremony.
As per the official statement, National Resuscitation Protocol (NRP) refers to the global standard in first-aid techniques for newborn babies that are not breathing or crying. VR, Gaming Technologies, cloud, AI/ML, the SmartNRP tool will be used for training the PHC health workers in Tamil Nadu under the NHM to take this technology forward. This will also be applied to other states where NMR is quite high.
Dr. Darez also released the ‘SmartFHR project’ to reduce the MMR which is targeted towards monitoring foetal health using smartphones anywhere and anytime without any clinical assistance.
Referring to this problem related to NMR, Dr. Ahamed explained that these effective tools will be provided to the healthcare workers in delivery points and they will also be trained to use those.
“If you look at Infant Mortality, the biggest contributor is Neonatal Mortality Rate (NMR) which is death within 28 days of birth. Around 40 babies are lost per every 1,000 births. We want to bring this down to single digits and all these initiatives are towards this direction”, as stated by Dr. Ahamed.
Further, Dr. Ahamed also said that IIT Madras should also develop tools to train the healthcare workers in treating accident victims and so on.
CSR Initiatives are supporting these projects. Indialeads.com Limited (BillDesk) has funded it. This support was extremely crucial for improving the health of the citizens at the grassroot level.
Professor V. Kamakoti also has commented on this occasion in regards to the utility of technology in bringing changes into healthcare.
“We need to bring in technology that will be accessible to rural India, and this technology is a step in that direction. This was one of the key learnings from the COVID-19 Pandemic. I am sure Virtual Reality will make an impact not only in healthcare verticals but in other areas as well”, as stated by the Professor.
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Thanking BillDesk, the CSR Partner Professor Mahesh Panchagnula, also has stated that this is not just a solution for today, but tomorrow as well. Professor M. Manivannan, Biomedical Engineering Group, who is also leading the XTIC, has commented regarding this innovation.
“XTIC is in line with the vision and mission of the institute to develop more such tools in the future towards the wellbeing of society, specifically rural India, using advanced technologies”, as stated by Professor Manivannan.
The XTIC team has already utilised the state-of-the-art technologies like Virtual Reality, 5g, Robotics, AI/ML to address the huge gap between skill training and the requirement. Earlier, their start-up ‘Merkel Haptics’ launched a unique ‘In-Vitro Fertilisation Training Stimulator’ which was already released to the global market.
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