Chennai: Indian Institute of Technology-Madras researchers are working with National Health Mission of Tamilnadu to improve newborn and maternal health.
Neonatal health and maternal health are crucial to increasing equity and reducing poverty in any country, which leads to solving large broader, economic, social and developmental challenges.
An IIT Madras team at the Centre of Excellence on Virtual Reality (VR) and Haptics, called Experiential Technology Innovation Center (XTIC), identified that skill training of the health workers was a major challenge that India was facing, specifically at the primary health centres in rural settings.
Dr Darez Ahamed, Mission Director, National Heath Mission Tamilnadu, released the ‘SmartNRP project’ for rural healthcare workers to reduce Maternal Mortality Rate (NMR) in India in the presence of Prof V Kamakoti, Director, IIT-Madras and others.
Neonatal Resuscitation Protocol (NRP) is the global standard in first aid technique for newborn babies that are not breathing/crying.
Using VR, Gaming Technologies, cloud, and AI/ML, the SmartNRP tool will be used for training the PHC health workers in Tamil Nadu under National Health Mission (NHM) to take the technologies forward. This will be scaled subsequently to other states in India where NMR is very high.
Further, Ahamed also released the ‘SmartFHR project’ to reducing Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR), it is aimed at monitoring foetal health using smartphones anywhere and anytime without clinical assistants. This project also will be scaled subsequently to other states where MMR is very high.
Addressing the event after releasing these tools, Ahamed said, ‘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.
We assure that these tools will now be provided to the healthcare workers in delivery points and we will also have special training points.’
These projects are supported by CSR initiatives, funded by IndiaIdeas.com Limited (‘BillDesk ‘). This support was crucial in developing these societal healthcare projects with a positive grassroots impacts.
Kamakoti said, ‘We need to bring in technology that will be accessible to rural India and this technology in a step in that direction. This was one of the key learnings from Covid-19 pandemic. I am sure Virtual Reality will make impact not only in healthcare verticals but in other areas as well.
There are lots of very interesting ideas from IIT Madras Research Scholars and students. The Institute has a process by which an idea can be converted into a product and benefit the society at large.’