Volume 7_Issue 2 Archives - InnoHEALTH magazine

S&T Minister launches AI-based water purification project

InnoHEALTH magazine digital team — Mon, 28 Feb 2022 10:15:20 +0000

Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Science & Technology; Minister of State (Independent Charge) Earth Sciences; MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh has launched a start-up of IIT alumni that uses Artificial Intelligence for water purification at an affordable cost. The Gurugram based company’s patented system, ‘Clairvoyant’ uses artificial intelligence to optimise purification systems and predict future breakdowns. This helped to remotely manage, update, and repair each system in real time. They have also developed clean drinking water solutions in the form of Water ATMs, which combine Internet of Things (IoT) technology with solar energy to provide clean drinking water. The water ATMs used solar energy to pump water from rivers, wells, ponds, or groundwater depending upon the location. The water is then treated with appropriate technology to make it potable. With this innovation, the cost of purified water is expected to be brought down to as low as 25 paise per litre. On the occasion, an MoU was also signed between Technology Development Board (TDB), a statutory body of Department of Science & Technology, Government of India and M/s Swajal Water Private Limited, the start-up company, which has been founded by ex-IITians.

Dr Jitendra Singh welcomed the financial support extended to Swajal by TDB and said that his Ministry is committed to reaching out to potential small and viable start-ups having skill and talent pool but lacking resources. He asked the CEO & Co-founder of Swajal, Dr Vibha Tripathi, to scale up this technology to help achieve India’s ambitious target of providing clean drinking water to all by 2024, as envisaged by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The Minister said that apart from the Central Government’s initiatives like National Rural Drinking Water Programme (NRDWP) and Jal Jeevan Mission, the private sector should come forward in a big way with state-of-the-art tech solutions to cover nearly 14 Crore households where clean drinking water is yet to reach. Referring to Prime Minister’s 75th Independence Day speech, where he said that in just two years of the Jal Jeevan Mission, more than four and a half crore families have started getting water from taps, Dr Jitendra Singh said that the Ministry of Science and Technology is positively contributing to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Vision and Mission of “Har Ghar Nal Se Jal”.

Dr. Srivari Chandrashekhar, Secretary DST & Chairperson TDB, pointed out that this project is a combination of new emerging technologies IoT and AI, combined with renewable solar energy to cater to the need for pure drinking water in villages and remote areas. Shri Rajesh Kumar Pathak, Secretary, TDB, said that the project will empower communities to plan and monitor their drinking water needs with community ownership and will get affordable, accessible, reliable, and clean drinking water 24×7 throughout the year. TDB is committed to supporting such innovative technologies for mass utility. “With the financial support from Technology Development Board, a social impact start-up like Swajal could do wonders. We are looking forward to covering more states in India at the earliest,” said Dr VibhaTripathi, CEO & Co-founder, Swajal.

SOURCE: India Scienc

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New compound to help make PPEs microbial resistant

InnoHEALTH magazine digital team — Mon, 28 Feb 2022 09:59:18 +0000

The fight against the COVID pandemic has got a new weapon in its arsenal with scientists developing a compound that promises to help make PPEs microbial resistant. Lignin, which is a natural and a nontoxic biopolymer, is an emerging material for developing coatings, films, gels, adhesives, and adsorbents. It also acts as a capping, stabilizing, and reducing agent for fabricating nanomaterials. In the new study, a team of researchers at the Department of Biotechnology’s Centre of Innovative and Applied Bioprocessing (DBT-CIAB), at Mohali have developed a lignin-based coating material, which when applied to a cotton cloth, was found to have antimicrobial properties. The scientists started by developing a titanium dioxide (TiO₂) nanocomposite by using lignin as the matrix. The product exhibited better antioxidant and antimicrobial properties when compared with lignin alone or commercially available Titanium dioxide nanocomposites by themselves. Subsequently, they prepared a lignin-based coating material. The compound was doped with the newly developed lignin- TiO₂ nanocomposites and with the commercial TiO₂ nanoparticles.

Comparative studies were performed among all the lignin coatings, both doped and undoped. The analysis showed that the lignin coating consisting of 5% w/w lignin based TiO₂ nanocomposites exhibited promising antimicrobial potential. A report on the findings has been published in ACS Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering, which is a journal of the American Chemical Society. The study team consisted of Jayeeta Bhaumik, Ravneet Kaur, Neeraj S. Thakur, and Sanjam Chandna. (India Science Wire)

SOURCE: India Science Wire

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First in the world – early stage of avascular necrosis reversed by oral rivaroxaban

InnoHEALTH magazine digital team — Wed, 09 Feb 2022 10:30:56 +0000

Avascular necrosis is a rare disease associated with many factors which cause direct damage to the vasculature of the bone, direct injury to the bone or bone marrow which ultimately leads to mechanical failure of the bone. In simple terms it is the death of bone tissue due to lack of blood supply. Till date many pharmacological agents including statins, bisphosphonates, anticoagulants like aspirin, enoxaparin and vasodilators have been tried to prevent the progression of osteonecrosis without successful documentation by imaging. Thus nothing has been able to successfully reverse the disease or promote the growth of viable bone in the necrotic lesion. Recently a 56 year old female patient who presented herself at Moolchand Medcity, New Delhi, India with an early stage Avascular Necrosis was successfully treated by the use of oral Rivaroxaban under medical supervision.

This is the first time in the world that a case of early stage Avascular Necrosis has been successfully reversed by oral Rivaroxaban. The patient was a known case of Type-2 diabetes mellitus, hypertension, obesity and dyslipidemia who came to the hospital with pain in her left hip joint and groin area for the past one month both at rest and aggravated by walking. There was associated limping too. In this case with the use of Rivaroxaban, a newer oral anticoagulant (NOAC) there was total revascularisation of the jeopardised head of the femur bone which was validated by serial MRI scans. The conservative treatment of the patient was done with a dosage of Rivaroxaban 10 mg daily with other symptomatic treatment. One month after the treatment there was significant decrease in symptoms and the patient started to walk without assistance. MRI pelvis done after 3 months of treatment showed no abnormality of the hip joint.

MRI done after 6 months of treatment showed sustained recovery evident of remarkable successful reperfusion of jeopardised head of the femur with complete recovery from AVN which is revolutionary.

Credit: Photo by Unsplash

SOURCE: WWW.HEALTHTECHNOLOGY.IN

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Vacuum-induced tamponade for postpartum hemorrhage

InnoHEALTH magazine digital team — Wed, 09 Feb 2022 09:32:06 +0000

One of the main causes for worldwide maternal morbidity and mortality is postpartum hemorrhage which is characterised by excessive bleeding after having a baby and it affects 1-5% of women who give birth. Mothers experiencing postpartum hemorrhage may require blood transfusions, long uncomfortable procedures, drugs with dangerous side-effects and even emergency hysterectomy with loss of fertility. It is a matter of great concern as its incidence is also on the rise, giving thrust to find new treatment approaches. So far non-surgical interventions done at the site of bleeding has been limited to balloon devices which expand the uterus while compressing the bleeding site.

Taking a note of this rising problem, a single-centre, observational cohort study was conducted at the Department of Obstetrics, University Hospital Zurich, Switzerland between 2017-2020. The result of which shows that vacuum-induced uterine tamponade by using a modified Bakri balloon system is a more successful treatment for postpartum hemorrhage. This newest advancement is a method that uses negative pressure created inside the uterus to collapse the bleeding cavity causing the muscle to close off the vessels.

66 women were treated with vacuum-induced tamponade, 2/3^rd (44/66) of the women were treated with vacuum-induced tamponade due to uterine atony and 1/3^rd(22/66) due to placental pathology. The median duration of vacuum application was 2.5 hours (interquartile range 1-4 hours). No adverse events directly related to vacuum-induced tamponade like perforation of the uterus, endomyometritis or anaphylaxis were observed. This method seems to provide a low-tech solution which has the potential to be translated to developing nations with low resource availability.

SOURCE: NCBI.NIM.NIH.GOV

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Smartphone-connected pacemakers

InnoHEALTH magazine digital team — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 10:48:18 +0000

An industry leader in the medical devices space, Medtronic has made a breakthrough innovation by bringing in pacemakers and other implanted heart devices like defibrillators that can connect to a patient’s mobile device or smartphone. The basic function of these implantable heart devices is to deliver electrical impulses to the heart muscle chambers to contract and pump blood to the body. So they are used to either prevent or correct arrhythmias (uneven, too fast or too slow heartbeats). Traditionally, pacemakers or defibrillators are monitored through a bed-side console that transmits the defibrillator or pacemaker data to the doctor.

Though there are millions of patients worldwide who have these implantable devices in them but many of them lack the basic understanding of the device or its functionality as well as its adherence to remote monitoring that has been suboptimally used till date. So the bluetooth-enabled pacemakers can help bridge this gap and provide a remedy to these issues of disconnection between patients and their cardiac treatment. These pacemakers have to be used with a mobile application which helps patients to have a greater insight into their health data from the pacemakers and transmit the health information to their treating doctors. This innovation is being looked at as one of the most impressive breakthroughs in healthcare technologies for the year 2021.

Credit: Photo by Unsplash

SOURCE: NEWS.MEDTRONIC.COM

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The first and only treatment for primary-progressive multiple sclerosis

InnoHEALTH magazine digital team — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 10:27:53 +0000

Multiple sclerosis is a disease in which an individual’s own immune system attacks the fatty myelin sheath which is a protective layer that covers the nerve fibres, causing communication problems between the brain and rest of the body resulting into a permanent damage or deterioration and eventually death. Data shows that nearly 15% of the the people suffering from multiple sclerosis experience a subset of the disease known as primary-progressive multiple sclerosis which is characterised by gradual onset and steady progression of signs and symptoms. Recently U.S.Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved therapeutic monoclonal antibody with a novel target as the first and only treatment for primary-progressive multiple sclerosis patients.

The FDA ruled on ofatumumab in August 2020. But the only FDA-approved medication for the struggling subset of multiple sclerosis with the primary-progressive condition is ocrelizumab making it the only drug for such patients for whom no treatment existed so far.

SOURCE: HEALTHLEADERSMEDIA.COM

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Gene therapy for hemoglobinopathies

InnoHEALTH magazine digital team — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 09:41:23 +0000

Amongst genetic disorders hemoglobinopathies are the ones that affect the structure or production of the haemoglobin molecule which is primarily the red protein responsible for transporting oxygen in the blood.

Most commonly occuring hemoglobiopathies are thalassemia and sickle cell disease. In the United States of America alone more than one lakh children are born with sickle cell disease and worldover more than three lakh thirty thousand are born with either sickle cell disease or thalassemia. An experimental gene therapy has been brought in by a latest research which proposes that with treatment, those people who are suffering from these conditions have the potential ability to make functional haemoglobin molecules also reduce the presence of sickled blood cells or ineffective blood cells in thalassemia and prevent associated complications. This is one of the most talked about medical innovations of the year 2021 which is going to be a boon for the sufferers of hemoglobinopathies.

SOURCE: PUBMED

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Bubble cpap-ideal for increased lung function in premature babies

InnoHEALTH magazine digital team — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 09:12:00 +0000

Frail and underweight babies who are born prematurely mostly require specialised care including ventilation for those born with infant respiratory distress syndrome (IRDS). So for IRDS, mostly and commonly infants are administered surfactant during mechanical ventilation, the drawback of which is that it can cause lasting injury to the lungs in preterm infants and may contribute to the development of chronic lung disease.

Bubble-continuous positive airway pressure( b-CPAP) on the other hand is a non-invasive ventilation strategy which minimises physical and subsequently the biotrauma for newborns with IRDS and is one of the methods by which continous positive air pressure is delivered to a spontaneously breathing newborn to maintain lung volumes during expiration. b-CPAP helps to prevent derecruitment of alveoli, increasing the lungs’ residual capacity and thus reducing the work of breathing in IRDS newborns.

When administered over a prolonged period, the oscillating pressure plays a very vital role in its safety and efficacy, minimising the physical trauma and stimulates lung growth.

SOURCE: INNOVATIONS.CLEVELANDCLINIC.ORG

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Advanced diagnostic solutions for hbaic base on HPLC technology by trivitron healthcare

InnoHEALTH magazine digital team — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 08:48:28 +0000

In the global diagnostic field many advancements are being made to effectively and efficiently manage diabetes. One such effort has been made by a leading Indian medical devices company, Trivitron Healthcare which has recently launched two innovative products named NANO H5 and NANO H 110 for the detection of HbA1c and Hemoglobin variant. Both NANO H5 and NANO H110 are high performance liquid chromatography analysers for the detection of HbA1c within 130 seconds. These analysers based on HPLC (high performance liquid chromatography) technology are going to be used to monitor thalassemia, diabetes and haemoglobin variants.

NANO H5 is a fully automated, compact HPLC analyser which uses ion exchange liquid chromatography for quantitative determination of the glycated haemoglobin (HbAIc) in human blood with processing time of 130 seconds that will speed up the turn around time in Laboratory. The product is equipped to process 5 samples at a time.

NANO H110 is also a fully automated, compact HPLC analyser which has a dual test mode for HbA1c test and haemoglobin variant detection. It comes installed with advance facilities like barcode scanner and cap piercing with a sample loading capacity of 110 samples at a time. This seems to be the USP of this product and is likely to make it more suitable for laboratories with medium to large workloads. These analysers are designed for precision and their compact size makes them user friendly.

SOURCE: CXOTV.NEWS

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