Tête-à-Tête with Prof. Suman Chakraborty
The Scholars’ Avenue caught up with Prof. Suman Chakraborty of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, whose team developed a low cost, minimally invasive device to measure blood haemoglobin and glucose levels. Here’s what he had to say.
[The Scholars’ Avenue and Prof. Chakraborty will henceforth be abbreviated as TSA and SC respectively]
TSA: What motivated research in low-cost medical devices?
SC: If there is one root cause that present-day health-care issues can be attributed to, it is the extremely high cost of medical treatment. Moreover, from my experience, people in rural areas are disadvantaged by inaccessible sporadically distributed health centres while the urban populace is plagued by high medical costs. In essence, we aimed to solve these very issues (time and affordability constraints) via this device.
TSA: So, how exactly does this device work?
SC: The device works due to the fluidic principle of surface tension. Once the drop of blood is placed on the strip, surface tension will cause the blood to move via a small channel to a region of the strip that houses some chemicals. The resulting chemical reaction will cause a change in the colour of the chemicals. This paper strip is then inserted in a box (with a smartphone attached) that takes a picture of the strip and uses image processing algorithms to output a numerical value of glucose and haemoglobin level.
Cost-wise, the paper strip costs 1 INR while the smartphone will require an investment of roughly 10000 INR. We do, however, have a cheaper alternative to the smartphone that uses an ADC converter and a lamp to achieve the same objective.
TSA: What happened once the device was found to be operational?
SC: Post-development, we obtained blood samples from the BC Roy pathology unit and tested their glucose levels using sophisticated equipment available in the hospital. The results matched the ones obtained using our device, but we were apprehensive about taking this at face value because of the optimal environmental conditions the device was operating in (air-conditioned lab with minimal dust and controlled humidity levels).
To validate these results, we visited two villages in West Bengal — Salboni, which had a government-operated hospital and Baarah, a very rural village. In both cases, results from our device matched those obtained from costlier devices. Consequently, we declared the device operational and displayed it at an MHRD exhibition in Delhi, where it attracted significant attention.
TSA: What plans now that the device has been validated?
SC: We’ve applied for a patent and plan to launch a pilot in the IIT KGP premises. Technology rights have already been sold to a company for a significant sum of money and I expect the institute to benefit significantly from this.
TSA: You have been very successful as a researcher. How does one do research right?
SC: I am personally driven by the pursuit of excellence and the intellectual pleasure that accompanies addressing a problem that nobody else has been able to solve. The fact that we work on issues pertinent to people — energy, water, healthcare et al. whose solutions have tangible outcomes on the quality their life plays a part too.
All of us have got quality education at an affordable price by virtue of the taxpayer’s money. It is thus only fair that we give back to society, not just by doing community service but through scientific innovation. Undergraduates should ideally be motivated by this.
