Development of a portable decision support tool for screening high risk antenatal cases at household level by community health workers
Primary Information
Domain
Healthcare
Project No.
5968
Sanction and Project Initiation
Sanction No: F.No.3-18/2015-TS-TS.1
Sanction Date: 28/10/2016
Project Initiation date: 08/02/2017
Project Duration: 36
Partner Ministry/Agency/Industry
Ministry of Health and Family Welfare Vejo vis Healthcare Solutions Pvt. Ltd.(Withdraws support early due to operational shutdown of company)
Role of partner:Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has provided 32% of the total fund received. Vejo vis Healthcare Solutions Pvt. Ltd. had not made any commitment in the financial level.
Support from partner:Vejo vis Healthcare Solutions Pvt. Ltd. withdrew support early due to operational shutdown of the company . Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has provided 32% of the total fund received.
Principal Investigator
Nishant ChakravortyPrimary
Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur
Host Institute
Co-PIs
Jayanta Mukhopadhyay
Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur
Analava Mitra
Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur
Swadeep Kumar Singh
Vejovis Healthcare Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
Scope and Objectives
a) Assessment of healthcare screening needs of antenatal cases and existing referral pattern in target population involving HCW. b) Development of image analysis based miniature kit for screening of anaemia, gestational diabetes and hypertension in ante-natal cases by instant hemoglobin measurement and semi-automated urine dipstick test. c) Development of a compact prototype decision support device -integrating commercially available devices like glucometer, sphygmomanometer with the new miniature kit developed d) Laboratory and clinical validation of developed prototype. e) Scaling up of prototype, pilot study and statistical data analytics to assess change in decision-making and referral services by HCW.
Deliverables
Providing front line healthcare workers with an antenatal screening tool that will impact referral decisions and hence reduce maternal morbidity and mortality. Generation of specificity driven data usable for policy decision making.
Scientific Output
A prototype for the image acquisition system has been developed. We are conducting different experiments in terms of using different lights and taking images of different shades of a particular color to check the robustness and performance of the image acquisition system. We have obtained a linear model for fitting of all sample values using linear regression. The error in the predicted sample data set varies from +1.85 g/dl to -1.38 g/dl. A user friendly interface will be a part of the software. Part of the user interface has already been developed and tested. The UI will support multiple languages. It has already been designed in English and Bengali. Part of the central system has already been developed and tested.
Results and outcome till date
Questionnaire study completed, analysis in progress. Image acquisition kit (device prototype) has been developed. Design and workflow of the user interface has been finalized and is being implemented. Integration of individual components are in progress.
Societal benefit and impact anticipated
The screening tool is intended to be able to provide benefit to pregnant women. Inadequate screening of high risk pregnancy cases and delayed referral lead to large number of maternal and child deaths. If properly screened, then the high risk cases can be identified in time to be prevented.
Next steps
1. Upgrading the device in terms of compactness of size and ease of use.
2. Data to be collected in large scale to achieve better results in the training algorithms.
3. The software to be developed to integrate the user interface and the image algorithms.
Publications and reports
Not yet
Patents
Not yet
Scholars and Project Staff
Junior research fellow pursuing MS 2 years Junior research fellow pursuing MS 2 years
Challenges faced
Scope of innovation is limited. Withdrawal of industry support early due to operational shutdown of company (intimated immediately) Mr. Swadeep Kumar Singh resigned as co-PI (intimated to IMPRINT by reports and email) Prof. Analava Mitra withdrew participation as Co-PI following his VRS
Financial Information
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Total sanction: Rs. 103.9 lakhs
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Amount received: Rs. 56.88 lakhs
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Amount utilised for Equipment: Rs. 9.23 lakhs
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Amount utilised for Manpower: Rs. 8.22 lakhs
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Amount utilised for Consumables: Rs. 5.15 lakhs
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Amount utilised for Contingency: Rs. 2.92 lakhs
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Amount utilised for Travel: Rs. 0.24 lakhs
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Amount utilised for Other Expenses: 0
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Amount utilised for Overheads: Rs. 9.48 lakhs
Equipment and facilities
ECPHTUTOR DS - cYBERsCAN (eutech) Ph METER 510 - 1 HDMI Monitor - 18.5" - 1 Dell Desktop computers + 19.5" LED Monitor (Dell) - 4 High Configuration Dell Desktop + 19.5" LED monitor (Dell)-1 Digital SLR Camera-1 Dell Desktop computers + 19" LED Monitor (Dell) - 4 iMark Microplate Reader Raspberry PI LED Display-1 DDR4 RAM 8GB-2 HP LaserJet Printer-1
