Corona Virus Treatment Technologies Evolving in India

Indian doctors, medical researchers and technologists have joined together to  develop low cost technologies for treatment of the Corona Virus infection in  the country.

PCR

One of the most popular Corona Virus treatment technologies  is the polymer swab, based on PCR (Polymer Chain Reaction). India imports testing kits and polymer swabs  from Germany, Italy and the US. This is not a cost effective solution and  is not feasible for the millions of testing kits tat India needs . Hence, a need is felt to develop indigenous low cost testing kit  and polymer swabs, which can be made available to a large number of people.

A joint project of C-MET (under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology), SRI Research For Tissue Engineering Private, Rangadore Hospital, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore and Additive Manufacturing Society of India have developed a low cost testing kit and polymer swab which can be made available on a large scale.

Another PCR and RNA based testing kit has been deveoped by the Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology in Trivandrum, which can test  upto 3000 samples in 24 hours. The testing kit is ready for industrial production.

A third such testing kit is being developed by the Trivitron Healthcare based in Chennai.

Meanwhile, Mylab Discovery in Pune has developed the first low cost testing kit and is ready to supply it at the rate of up to 200,000 kits per week. Incidentally, the kit was developed under the guidance of  Dr Minal Bhosle, who was battling with the emergency of her own full term pregnancy and a Caesarian when the kit was released.

Plasma Treatment

Another new model has emerged called Plasma Treatment. This is meant only for the critically ill patients of Corona Virus  who are on ventilators. ICMR has given the permission  to go for the clinical trial of Plasma Treatment for Corona Virus treatment. Five medical colleges; at Trivandrum, Alapuzha, Ernakulam, Trichur and Kannur, have been included  in the trials.

Plasma gives the patient's body a support to begin producing its own antibodies instead of injecting antibodies through a vaccine.

Technologies

The PCR involves raising and lowering of temperature called thermal cycling while mixing enzymes and reagents.  For this, thermal cycling machines are used, which are enabled with temperature reading and changing technology.  Software is used to count the number of copies of RNA sequence in the sample being tested.  The software also notifies when the number of copies exceeds a threshold, indicating the presence of Corona Virus.  There are machines that analyse PCR an give results.

The health-tech company called Abbott has a digital machine called ID Now which gives analytics about flu, and other respiratory symptoms. Now the company has integrated a digital device for   giving analytics about Corona Virus in ID Now.

"I'm looking for a Biomedical Engineer with a clinical experience, handles ventilators on a daily basis.  We are a small team of aerospace/electronics/electrical engineers, trying to build a prototype ventilator for emergency situation with Indian elements."

--Prof  Garab Bannerjee, IISc, Bangalore

In Plasma Treatment, digital tech is being used to read and analyse the presence  of Corona Virus proteins and antibodies produced in response to these proteins.

Ventilators with digital reading machines for the functioning of the body organs, Corona Virus Tracks etc are also part of the tech landscape in fighting Corona Virus.

Indian Corporate Contributions

Many Indian start ups have begun to develop low cost  technology to help fight Corona Virus. Bangalore based start up Ethereal Machines is developing a 3D printing ventilator splitter, which can manage 2 patients simultaneously. Karkhana.io is using 3D printing,  injection moulding etc to mass produce PPEs and iCU equipments for doctors and patients. PerSapien in New Delhi has developed a robot to sanitise any space.

"We need more Indian innovators to start building such indigenous solutions for potential ventilators shortage and other COVID cures. Paytm commits ₹5 crore for such teams working on COVID related medical solutions."

--Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Founder, PayTM

"Our Projects team stands ready to assist the Govt/Army in erecting temporary care facilities.  The Mahindra Foundation will create a fund to assist the hardest hit in our value chain small businesses and the self-employed,"

--Anand Mahindra, Chairman, Mahindra Group

Helyxon at Chennai  has developed a device called Oxy2 to monitor the functioning of the body. Staqu at Gurgaon has made an AI-enabled thermal reading camera.  Pulse Active Collection Networks at Hyderabad has set up a digitised kiosks to collect samples for testing.  Big Bang Boom at Chennai has developed an automated remote-controlled ventilator system.

The contributions of the corporate sector show that they are ready to get involved in fighting the Corona Virus  technology challenge and also  to contribute financially in this fight.  Recent news shows that although the cases of Corona Virus in India are still rising, the rate of infection has slowed down and there are no critical cases in India, as is shown on the Worldometer website which is tracking the cases of Corona Virus infection globally.