IIT Madras to collaborate with AIIMS Mangalagiri on patient safety & quality healthcare delivery

Chennai: Indian Institute of Technology Madras is going to collaborate with AIIMS Mangalagiri on affordable future technological solutions in various areas including patient safety and quality healthcare.

The partnership between these institutions will also feature academic and research collaborations in areas of mutual interest, exchange of scholarly information, students and faculty besides sponsorship of joint seminars, workshops, health and wellness projects of high impact.

Prof Bhaskar Ramamurthi, Director, IIT Madras, and Dr. T.S. Ravikumar, President, AIIMS Mangalagiri, signed the MoU on 3rd February 2020 and held discussions on the scope of collaboration as well as the deliverables.

Speaking about this collaboration, Prof. M. Manivannan, Touch Lab, Biomedical Engineering Group, Department of Applied Mechanics, IIT Madras, who is leading the project from IIT Madras, said, “What India needs is affordable and high quality healthcare technologies, not high end technologies,  for making high impact, reaching out even the bottom of the pyramid. Both IIT Madras and AIIMS Mangalagiri have the same mission.”

Through on-going interactions between Dr. Ravikumar and Prof. Manivannan, two Virtual Reality (VR) products have already developed in the Touch Lab of IIT Madras and its spin-off company Merkel Haptic Systems were showcased last month at the 1st Foundation Day of AIIMS Mangalagiri celebrated on 24th January 2020.

Highlighting the areas of collaboration, Dr. T.S. Ravikumar, President, AIIMS Mangalagiri, said, “The strengths that IIT Madras brings with depth in many technological fields such as Virtual Reality, Haptics, AI, Robotics, and health economics, among others, aligns well and is synergistic with AIIMS Mangalagiri goals (MTP) of creating happy communities through healthcare transformations.”

Several other collaborations discussed include healthcare robotics, predictive models using Artificial Intelligence/ Deep Learning, and remote presence point-of-care solutions to improve hospital and community health outcomes.