It was Sachin Gaur’s tryst with destiny – narration of the sugary tale. “My quest for diabetes cure and management: a health accident that has given me a purpose in life.

Surrounded by healthcare experts, my quest of promoting healthcare innovations could not have been better. Until I was diagnosed with high blood sugar and the week immediately after with a medical emergency, which has no direct link with my diabetic condition, but the treatment is such that I need to have a strict regime of a brisk walk, frequent meals, and schedule of oral drugs and insulin. As I am writing this I have spent 6 days in a hospital bed (which was the first time since I was born) and 14 days out of it. The condition I had, essentially, I felt reborn but this time it seemed with a greater purpose. So, I am writing this article – not as 35 years old but a 20-day infant.

It seems the drugs that I am taking have made me as curious as a child – nothing seems impossible. I was able to synthesize a few lines on the hospital bed, which summarize my state of the mind. For English readers, this poem essentially means that I want to win my diet, in my mind and the exercise that this body can do. I need a resolve, determination, and courage from the almighty combined with the blessings of my elders and love of dear ones to defeat the voices of the world.

With this thought process in my mind, the project “Experiments with Sugar” (www.ExperimentsWithSugar.in) was born. With a team of 11 – from different walks of life: medical experts, researchers, a filmmaker, and more joining every day; we aim to enable 1 million people living with diabetes either cure or better manage their diabetes by the end of September 2021. I will be reporting the progress to you for the next three years via the InnoHEALTH magazine. This is the first social cause project we have undertaken at “InnovatioCuris Foundation for Healthcare and Excellence” (ICFHE), a not-for-profit organization as a mission mode project.

With the support of our experts, I managed to meet with some of the top experts and we are getting a great response. To name a few: Dr. Rakesh Sahay, Head of Department at Osmania Medical College; Joseph Duffy, Executive Director, Head of A Neo Diabetic’s Tryst with Destiny & Birth of Innovative Enterprise to Combat Challenge External Discovery Chemistry – Kenilworth, Merck & Co.

We plan to release a few episodes every month as a web series to provide scientifically correct information but in an accessible way to the common man. So, as a reader do guide us and send good suggestions our way. By the year-end, we also aim to produce a very high-quality report on the unmet needs of the stakeholders involved in the life of a person living with diabetes. This will then feed into the Smart India Hackathon planned in February 2019 as a diabetes track to support innovation in the country. We need suggestions for a planned roundtable in December 2018 in Hyderabad to validate our findings and further record the proceedings on the best scientific knowledge on diabetes.

Please write to me by sending an email with a suggestion and queries at sachin@innovatiocuris.com.

On the windy streets of Copenhagen, children, young adults, and older people are all on bikes, with parents and their children on cargo bikes (a quarter of families in Copenhagen own one). It may look as though Copenhageners crave the outdoors, get a kick out of exercise, want to be fit and healthy. It may or may not be the reason. Maybe, it’s just the easiest way to get anywhere.

Admiring all this and more, we at InnovatioCuris, attended the 24th Annual International partnering conference BIO-Europe 2018. BIO-Europe, scheduled for 5th – 7th November 2018 in Copenhagen, Denmark, a pre-eminent conference for the life sciences, is Europe’s largest partnering conference that serves the global biotechnology industry. It brought together the thought leaders and international decisionmakers from the whole healthcare sector including biotechnology, pharmaceutical, investors and policymakers, offering networking opportunities, workshops & panel discussions, high profile exhibition and B2B meetings. It provided an excellent networking platform for strategic partnerships.

InnovatioCuris supported the event as a media sponsor with focus on networking through B2B meetings and exhibition, along with the aim of strengthening its ecosystem with innovative partners in order to bring down the healthcare delivery cost and improve the quality of care.

It was an exceptional experience coupled with reinforcing existing partnerships and scouting new stakeholders / global experts in the healthcare space.

We came back home with warm memories and new friends. We look forward to creating an impact together by fostering innovations in the health sector.

Parthvee Jain is an engineering graduate with specialization and interests in fields like Biotechnology, Healthcare, Food Processing, and Nutraceuticals. Connecting European Healthcare innovation leaders with the Indian healthcare system and pioneers, she heads the market access program and partnerships at InnovatioCuris: impacting organizational performance through expert research, analysis and evaluating market competitive conditions, current and emerging trends, and industry-specific solutions.

For many decades, inspiring and juicy narratives, pertaining to iconic first generation entrepreneurs like Apple’s Steve Jobs, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Truecaller’s Swedish developers, Flipkart’s launchers are being succinctly dished out at publicly to fire imagination of those fancying own start-ups in the contemporary era of out of the box ideas linked innovative business enterprises, and this is what was exactly scripted at a one-day workshop at the famed Shriram Institute for Industrial Research recently.

An inspiring story of a young entrepreneur was narrated as he had designed a multipurpose scissor for operation theatres after quietly peeping through a glass window that a team of surgeons was battling with a bunch of varied sized scissors while operating his close kin at a hospital. Likewise, another speaker delved out an emotional story of currently internationally popular “smart cane” to the benefit of millions of blinds across the globe.

Those present at the workshop were awe struck on such absorbing and motivating narrations that kindled hopes and vindicated the time proven fact that nothing was inaccessible by a fertile and intelligent mind of any diligent individual. The import of a day-long meet was that everyone should ignite imaginations encased within their minds rather than sitting tightly over those.

A One-Day Workshop on “Technological Innovations for Healthcare Start-ups & 3rd Anniversary celebration of InnovatioCuris (IC)” was jointly organized by SRI-Technology Business Incubator (TBI) & InnovatioCuris on 4th August 2018 at SRI Auditorium, New Delhi. Participants included key members from healthcare start-ups, medical professionals, industrialists, entrepreneurs, medical device manufacturers, plastic industry, officials from govt. institutions and students from various universities.

The event was inaugurated by addressing the distinguished delegates and budding entrepreneurs about the advancement and new innovations in the healthcare sectors. It was a delightful moment to see the positive response from industry stalwarts of the region and Science and Technology start-ups’ keen interest in venturing into new business entities.

Also Read: 5th IC Club Meeting: Fairytales of Nanoparticles from Iceland to Jamia Millia Islamia

Dr. K. M. Chacko, Director, Shriram Institute in his address briefed about the Technology Business Incubation concept. He highlighted the excellent support provided by the Department of Science & Technology (DST) at the Indian Ministry of Science & Technology because of which the Shriram Institute – Technology Business Incubator (SRI-TBI) has been running for past so many years. The center provides services in the fields of healthcare, plastics, rubbers, specialty chemicals, and waste management. Continuing the inaugural session, the address of the Surgeon Rear Admiral & MD, InnovatioCuris Prof. (Dr.) V.K. Singh helped in setting the tone for the workshop. He briefed the national & international status of healthcare sector during his delightful thought.

Chief Guest of the event, Mr. Vijay Kumar, briefed about the support available to the start-ups at the Ministry. He appreciated the efforts made by SRI-TBI team and opined that the multidisciplinary activities of SRI would be useful for promotion of incubator programme. He briefed about the various funding schemes offered by the Ministry to micro, small & medium enterprises which both the existing and the future entrepreneurs can take advantage of. The floor was taken by Dr. Shirshendu Mukherjee who added his appreciation for the joint efforts made by team InnovatioCuris & SRI-TBI. He briefed about the industry-academia interface and implementation of its benefits through a wide range of impact initiatives, be it providing access to risk capital through targeted funding, technology transfer, IP management and handholding schemes that help bring innovation excellence to the biotech firms and make them globally competitive. He added that the supporters of change for building the Indian bio-economy would be biotech start-ups & SMEs & hence our focus is on raising their capabilities.

The inaugural session followed with the launch of a start-up innovative product Nylon Sleeve Anchor Fastener. The product was developed by Mr. Rajendra Gupta, Director, Axel India with the support of SRI-TBI & are in scaling up the process for the healthcare sector. The Inaugural session ended with the vote of thanks by Dr. Ajay Tyagi who mentioned that the efficiency, benefits, barriers, and challenges for healthcare industry are very process-centric and technology use can be mainly attributed to the success of entrepreneurs. This was followed by two technical panel discussions.

The first technical session was on Innovations for Reducing the Burden of NCDs. The panelists stated that the Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) are reaching epidemic proportions worldwide and present an unprecedented challenge to economic and social development globally. The latest projections from the World Health Organization (WHO) suggest, 57 million deaths occurred globally of which 36 million (63%) were the result of NCDs. Despite the immense burden of disease, NCDs, defined here as cardiovascular diseases, cancers, chronic respiratory conditions, and diabetes. It is estimated that 80% of NCDs are preventable with appropriate diet and lifestyle choices and good control of NCDs can have a substantial effect on the incidence of downstream complications. Hence there exists a need for innovations to reduce the burden of NCDs. The panelists also suggested the steps for reducing the burden of NCDs in the present scenario.

The second technical session was on What will take Indian Healthcare sector forward. The panelists discussed various aspects about the current scenario of healthcare sector and suggested several notable points including obtaining proposals from private insurance companies and the government on ways to provide medical insurance coverage to the population at large and execute the strategy; it is healthy to have competition in health care and provide health insurance to the millions who cannot afford it; revise the curriculum in medical, nursing, pharmacy and other schools that train healthcare professionals, so that they too are trained in the new paradigm; the government should appoint a commission which makes recommendations for the healthcare system and monitors its performance; encourage business schools to develop executive training programmes in healthcare, this will effectively reduce the talent gap for leadership in this area; rapidly develop and implement national accreditation of hospitals – those that do not comply would not get paid by insurance companies. However, a performance incentive plan that targets specific treatment parameters would be a useful adjunct.

The programme concluded with a visit to SRI-TBI Prototype Development Facility. The participants were highly excited to see the actual processing of plastics injection molding and blow molding processes and expressed their earnest desire to be incubated in the facility.

Dr. Pavan Varma co-founded Biotech start-ups in Varanasi and New Delhi. He has business experience in molecular diagnostics, genomics, contract research, and product development. He has conducted several Biotech workshops and training sessions for science graduates in Varanasi and also established several in-house panels for rare genetic disorders, cancers, and infectious agents along with design and development of low-cost DNA tools.

On a day of plunging temperature at Reykjavik airport in Iceland almost thirteen years ago, a few journalists, while briskly walking on the tarmac to embark on a special aircraft, were impatient to find out exact definition of Nanoparticles.

They were expecting this midair query from the scientist turned President APJ Kalam with whom they were flying on the state visit to a few nations including big bang experiment site at CERN laboratory on the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva.

Dr. Kalam, during onboard freewheeling interactions with accompanying media contingent used to ask several simple questions while giving an elaborative narrative of complex scientific issues in common man language. His narration on Nanoparticles usage in health care discipline was always a gripping one.

Coincidently, on a day of soaring temperature in the same month 13 years after, another Scientist Dr. Amit Kumar Dinda was batting coolly on the subject in a lecture hall of Jamia Millia Islamia Central University in the national capital and was giving an absorbing narrative on Nanoparticles. His chronicle was equally informative and exciting.

For me, it was an instant revival of flashback memories of Nanoparticles and developments in India and Dr. Kalam’s vision of Nanoparticles researches and its usage in various disciplines.

The mega dissertation on the Nano theme by Dr. Dinda from AIIMS, New Delhi was equally engrossing. He was speaking at the Third IC (InnovatioCuris) meeting which had a talk regarding Nanotechnology and its commercial impact.

The talk highlighted the significance of Nanotechnology as a future driver of innovations and useful economy. He further exemplified with his own contributions to the field including nanoparticulate ambisomes against Kala-azar, nano formulation based HBV vaccine for oral delivery, nanoformulations against leishmaniasis.

The focus of the IC club meeting was about Biotechnology future innovation, Funding scenario and Start-ups. It was for the first time that the IC club meeting was organized in a university to encourage participation of academia.

Dr. Dinda has equally cautioned the pitfalls in Nano research and product development, which was very elucidative and useful for the present members and students. His experience with Nanoscience made him realise the importance of collaborative approach, as it is a highly inter-disciplinary science.

Nanotechnology is very liberative and robust in the sense that it offers low cost, and viable and scalable technology, the sort of which is need of the hour in India. Also given the reason that it has been practised in India in Ayurveda, gives a point of leveraging for existing vedic processes. The impacted areas range from health, environment, water purification, therapeutics, organ regeneration, to such hi-fi technologies like nanotised robots for vivo monitoring.

Dr. Dinda, also stressed on the importance of quality human resource and specially a dedicated one. He has given several examples of his experience abroad during his residency, where he was member of several failure commitees, and stressed on the importance of reasoning a failure.

The other talk in the meeting was given by Dr. Pavan from Scangene Labs, a first generation entrepreneur in the biotechnology domain with focus on low cost diagnostics. He shared his experience of establishing his start-up and his companies plan A and plan B. His team was instrumental in developing several panels for diagnosis of cancer markers and rare genetic disorders. They developed low cost equipment and devices for use in reserach setups and educational institutes.

Dr. Pavan have showcased their research into development of a low cost TB resistance screening devise and claimed to make it a less than one dollar possibility. They stressed the importance of having a plan A and plan B for survival in the Biotech Start-up landscape. They concluded saying India needs more PADMAN’s in Biotechnology.

The general mood of the meeting was regarding the buzz in the policy shift towards biological sector by the Government of India. Several important observations were shared by the clubites in this regard, like the present call for grand challenges focussed towards synthetic biology, the present heads of scientific bodies being decorated by emineries from biology background, etc. The other significant dialogue in the meeting was regarding focus on low cost technology, and the importance of quality certification and /or recognition by regulatory bodies.

Informatively, with the commitment to giving an encouraging platform to innovators and aspiring startups, InnovatioCuris (IC) was created as a knowledge-based platform to exchange best practices of healthcare innovations across the globe by conducting international conferences, and extending the same message in internationally-acclaimed, quarterly magazine named “InnoHEALTH”, complimentary webinars and training.

The club brings innovators, investors, start-ups, technology persons, policymakers, health experts and legal advisers under one large umbrella to be members and hold hands by sharing success stories and challenges and to incubate their ideas to take the dream and vision of India forward. It has a very strong band of advisers to support the activity of club and mentor projects. The aim is to bring down healthcare delivery cost yet maintain quality through innovations. IC has an outreach of 30,000 people globally to share its activities.

Dr. Amit Kumar Dinda MD, PhD is a Professor of Department of Pathology at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi. After his post graduation in Pathology he did his PhD in the area of Cancer Biology at the same institute. His area of work includes Immunopathology, Inflammation and cell biology, Experimental pathology, Ultrastructural pathology, Biomaterials and Nanomedicine. In the area of Nanomedicine, he is actively involved in several projects related to nanoparticle-mediated drug delivery, antigen and DNA delivery system. Dr. Amit is working in the area of nano-cell biology to understand nanoparticle and cellular interaction. He is in the editorial committee of 12 national & international journals. He has worked as a Visiting Professor in Long Island Jews Medical Center & Elbert Einstein Medical College, New York, USA as well as University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. Dr. Amit has published more than 200 research articles in indexed journals and edited 4 books. He has written 14 chapters in books and acquired 3 patents in the areas of nanotechnology and biopolymer.

The other interesting discussion was for the need of an ecosystem for development of tools and devices for Biotechnology.

Patients often “drop dead” while feeling completely normal. This collapse happened to my grandfather on July 3rd, 2015 which served as an impetus for me to find a solution to this problem. In these “silent” cases, doctors are unlikely to administer the crucial FABP3 blood test because there is no visible presentation of symptoms to warrant a diagnostic test. As a result, silent heart attacks go unnoticed.

“I realized that if at-risk patients could test themselves daily for the presence of FABP3 in their blood. They would have higher chances of detecting silent heart attacks as they occur. A method that allows daily self-testing would have to be non-invasive, safe, and easy to use. Ultimately, it would have to involve a transcutaneous blood analysis, which examines the contents of one’s blood without penetrating the skin.

In searching for ways to tackle this challenging prospect. I examined the various distinguishing characteristics of blood proteins that would allow them to be identified transcutaneously. I found that proteins have distinctive masses and electric charges in blood.

So, I used a model to test whether different magnitudes of charged electricity. When applied to a thin area of skin, would isolate FABP3 from the other blood proteins and attract FABP3 to the capillary walls. My results showed that this is true.

This means that the technique that I investigated can potentially be coupled with transcutaneous UV-protein quantification to non-invasively measure the amount of FABP3 in a patient’s blood and alert him or her of a silent heart attack.”

Help Million Hearts Stay Healthy! Is his web page that narrates his vision.

He was frequenting scientific conventions to further his knowledge in the science field. Internet gave him a lot of insight, he admits Clinical trials for the medical device are on. And it could be approved for a human trial. The product would be fit to be launched in the market after two months of human trial, assuming nothing goes wrong.

“I have already filed for a patent and I would tie up with the department of biotechnology for the trial. I would want the Government of India to take the project instead of selling it to a private company because it is for the public good,” he says on his website.

To monitor, regular use small silicon patch stuck to your wrist or back of your ear. Whether there has been a heart attack instead of waiting for a doctor to prescribe a test.

The patch uses a positively charged electrical impulse to draw negatively charged —protein to the surface; If the amount of FABP3 is high, then the person would need immediate medical attention; Experts recommend to use the device twice a day. The product can soon be in the market. It would cost around R 900, cheaper than a glucometer symptoms at all.

Diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels all put you at risk of a silent heart attack, experts say. Having a silent heart attack puts people at a greater risk of having another heart attack, which could be fatal. Having another heart attack also increases the risk of complications, such as heart failure.

Chest pain, pain in the left arm or shortness is when of breath characterizes a silent heart attack. A silent heart attack may not show symptoms of chest pain and shortness of breath that doesn’t feel heart attack. Akash aims to study cardiology at the country’s premier All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi.

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