Broad Coverage

World Health Organization (WHO) statistic shows that India has made considerable progress over recent years in attaining Millennium Development Goals. However, its relative ranking among nations continues to remain poor. The challenges faced are many as well as complex, in ensuring healthcare is accessible, affordable and appropriate for all concerned. There is a need in developing technology based solutions, using traditional knowledge, and emphasizing on disease avoidance to reduce overall disease burden. The IMPRINT-India Healthcare road map building exercise, centers around educational and research perspectives on the concepts of healthy living, prevention, diagnosis, treatment, after-care, management, legal issues and innovation ecosystem.

Health Literacy and Healthy Living

Health literacy is required through school curricula for adoption of a healthy lifestyle from childhood that includes tackling substances that may be harmful, and giving stress on personal hygiene, sanitation, avoidance of road-injuries etc. Health literacy is directly related to health outcomes for both individuals and health systems, and has significant impact on healthcare costs. According to WHO, about 80% of cardiovascular disease and diabetes, and at least 40% of cancers are preventable by changing lifestyle. The focus of this theme is disease avoidance, rather than disease treatment.

Prevention and Primary, Community Healthcare

It involves an integrated team of primary healthcare professionals, social workers, nurses, pharmacists, dietitian, community based outreach workers like Anganwadi, ANM, ASHA, and community engagement specially, among vulnerable population like women, child and people from rural and underprivileged background. It requires measurement, monitoring and intervention that can be easily accessed by our population. This is to ensure that health problems, if any, are addressed early, before they become serious health issues.

Diagnostic Imaging

Diagnostic imaging involves pathological and radiological image-guided medical decision making for disease diagnosis and prognosis. They include X-rays, CT scans, Nuclear medicine scans, MRI scans, Ultrasound, Microscopic imaging etc. These are among the most trusted aid to the physicians in today's healthcare. Majority of the diagnostic imaging procedures are expensive and mostly inaccessible in rural areas. The focus here is to provide innovative and cost-effective medical imaging technologies and medical software solutions.

Wearable Devices and Embedded Systems

Wearable healthcare devices are useful in monitoring pathophysiological parameters of an individual such as blood pressure, pulse rate, SpO2, perfusion rate, activity profile. It consists of small physiological sensor, transmission modules and processing capabilities. Medical embedded system integrated with Computer-Aided Diagnosis (CAD) is useful in automated decision making, visualization and extraction of hidden complex features useful for disease screening and monitoring. This includes innovations around portable/ table-top devices for monitoring vital health parameters.

Point-of-Care Diagnosis

Conventional diagnostic practices are time consuming, labor-intensive; require elaborate infrastructures and on-field pathologists. The development of portable, inexpensive point-of-care (POC) diagnostic devices has the potential to be a useful platform for easy and spot diagnostics, without necessitating expensive infrastructures, expert personnel. POC devices also offer rapid and affordable diagnostics for mass population, at their convenience. It includes rapid test of blood, urine, electrocardiogram, heart rate, oxygen saturation etc.

Healthcare ICT

The advancement in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in today's world not only connects, educates and empowers people but also ushers in services like e-Health, m-Health, e-ICU, Telemedicine, Virtual learning platform, Simulator Design, Health Grid, Health Data Exchange, Healthcare Data Analytics etc. ICT has an impact on many aspects of health care services in developed and developing countries. The most important are accessibility to healthcare services by citizens, economical aspect and, quality of care aspect, anywhere anytime.

Drug Discovery, Design and Delivery

The focus of this theme is on the discovery, design and delivery of novel therapeutics as remedial agents. This will encompass recent techniques of drug design and delivery strategies that will be strengthened by novel methods and materials and, consider interfaces between nanotechnology and life processes. The other aim here is on targeted delivery to improve efficiency of treatment and reduce side effects. The long term goal is to find newer targets and molecules to provide novel effective drugs based on specific biological targets.