15 April, 2014

Coming soon — low cost healthcare equipment for the common man

Pune: Soon, the expensive healthcare devices which are out of common man’s reach will be available at low costs as the city’s premier institute, College of Engineering Pune (CoEP) is partnering with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay and Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology (VNIT) on research and development (R&D) project. The cost of the project is estimated at Rs39.39 crore to develop low-cost health care equipment, which will have innovative features.
An estimated amount of $40 billion is spent on healthcare every year. Over 50 per cent is spent in hospitals and 30 per cent on pharmaceuticals.  

‘Medical devices represent nearly 20 per cent of the total healthcare spending, growing at over 15 per cent annually,’ said BB Ahuja, professor of Production Engineering and deputy director of CoEP. He added that majority of the devices are imported and are costly. It thus becomes difficult for patients who are from the economically weaker section of society to afford them.
‘Healthcare could be improved with modern technological inputs. Medical devices including variety of implants is an important area that requires inputs from medical as well as technological institutions,’ said a sanction order by Rajiv Gandhi Science and Technology Commission Government of Maharashtra.  

Ahuja said that after going through an extensive exercise and discussions with medical and engineering professionals, it was felt that it is appropriate to set up a dedicated facility to carry out this project. ‘As per the proposal submitted by IIT Bombay, there will be bio-medical engineering and Technology Centre Incubation at IIT Bombay and two sub-centres at VNIT, Nagpur and COEP,’ he said. He added that the the project is for five years and it will be monitored by the commission. Of the sanctioned funds, Rs2.5 crore has been allocated to CoEP, Rs2.6 crore for VNIT and the rest for IIT-B.  

CoEP already posses expertise in biomedical technology as the college have provided nine units of implants to Sancheti hospital. The CoEP will augment its existing infrastructure and will be hiring fresh research fellows to specifically work on this project. Ahuja said that since the project is in the nascent stage, it would be difficult to say by how much the cost will go down

The products

·         Healthcare monitoring devices like digital thermometers, blood glucometers and blood pressure meters

·         Medical devices like medical imaging (X-ray, computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, ultrasound, chromatography and cardiology, cancer diagnostics and laboratory instruments)

·         Drug eluting stents

·         Therapeutic devices including surgical instruments, non-invasive devices, plastics disposables, implants and prosthetics

·         Implants and prosthetics

·         Orthopedic devices like bone plates, screws for stabilizing fractured bones

Source: http://health.india.com                       15.04.2014

Beware — smoking can ruin your delicate sense of taste!

It gives your heart disease, ruins your libido, gives you cancer, makes your look horrible and even ruins your oral health and here’s another reason to kick the butt – it ruins your taste buds. Smokers do not enjoy their coffee despite the strong, bitter taste of caffeine being easily detected. It seems their ability to taste is impaired by toxic chemicals found in tobacco, even after they have quit smoking.

As part of the study, scientists tested how well 451 volunteers could recognise the four basic flavours of sweet, sour, bitter and salty, as well as the intensity of each taste. Researchers found that whether the volunteers smoked or not did not affect whether they could recognise salty, sweet or sour tastes — but it did have an effect where the bitter taste of caffeine was concerned.

One in five smokers and one in four ex-smokers could not correctly recognise the taste. However, 13 percent of non-smokers also failed the taste test. Researchers believe the build-up of tobacco in the body could stop taste buds renewing themselves and so harm a person’s ability to recognise certain tastes, even after they have stopped smoking. The findings of the study have been published in the latest edition of the journal ‘Chemosensory Perception’.

Source: http://health.india.com       

15.04.2014

Fear is the main reason for every failure & Confidence is the main reason for all success