Guwahati, Oct 10: A start-up led by the alumni of Indian Institute of Technology-Guwahati (IIT-G) has developed an indigenous point-of-care-testing (POCT) device, MobilabTM, which is expected to test 25 parameters in blood to diagnose chronic diseases related to kidney, liver, heart and pancreas malfunctions.
The start-up, M/s Primary Healthtech Pvt Ltd, is incubated at the Research Park and the Centre for Nanotechnology on the IIT-G campus, with extensive research and design, translational, and regulatory support from SWASTHA Centre for Excellence of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), ICMR-DHR Centre of Excellence and BIRAC-DBT.
Its team of 30 engineers and researchers claims to make diagnostics frugal, portable, affordable and accessible.
The device is operated through an IoT-enabled Android app and can perform about 150 tests with a single charge of the battery, which enables a digitally-connected ecosystem for its use even for the remotest locations of the nation and serves the last-mile population.
The device is expected to perform early screening of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), which contribute to around 41 million (74 percent) of deaths globally, according to recent reports of the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Speaking about MobilabTM, Sahil Jagnani, an alumnus of IIT-G and the founder and CEO of Primary Healthtech, said, “The vision of MobilabTM is to make diagnosis available to fellow citizens at an affordable cost, along with generating instant results to speed up the early screening, disease management, and treatment.”
“MobilabTM is also expected to perform import substitution under the Make-in-India initiative,” he said.
One of the main reasons for such occurrences has been the lack of regular testing facilities at the patient’s site for NCD alongside the unhealthy lifestyles in the low-resource setting.
“MobilabTM will enable testing at patients’ sites at a low cost to enable early screening as well as long-term disease management at an affordable cost for millions of people every year,” he claimed..
The device generates real-time data in 10 minutes, followed by a digital report, along with an electronic health record of the patient which can be easily shared with the doctors.
Notably, MobilabTM is validated at various levels in hospitals such as Guwahati Medical College and Hospital, Guwahati Neurological Research Centre, Nemcare, Army Hospital, AIIMS New Delhi, and has been deployed in various parts of Assam, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Delhi and Arunachal Pradesh.