Interactive Workshop on ‘Innovating Medical Equipment: Role of lab testing Involving Clinicians’ organised by PGIMER’s BID HUB concludes successfully
Chandigarh : February 21 : Biomedical Instruments and Devices Hub: A Centre for Innovation, Design and Clinical Validation (BID HUB) established at PGIMER Chandigarh, excelling in the promotion of indigenous high-quality medical devices Research & Development with the support of the Department of Science & Technology (DST), Government of India.
BID-Hub, PGIMER, Chandigarh organized an interactive workshop entitled “Innovating Medical Equipment: Role of lab testing Involving Clinicians,”to have an intellectual interchange about developing innovative medical devices, various funding opportunities, brainstorming, and collaboration opportunities.
Prof. G.D. Puri, Dean , PGI informed the participants and delegates about the activities undertaken by the Biomedical Hub viz. testing and validation of biomedical instruments and described the innovations developed at and patented by PGIMER and are available for commercial application
Prof. J Gowrishankar, Director, IISER-Mohali, detailed about the IISER’s contribution to the medical device research space and highlighted the areas in which clinicians can exploit IISR’s facilities for furthering biomedical device innovations. Prof. GD Puri, Dean Academic PGIMER, Chandigarh, briought out the possibility of meeting among IISER’s scientists and PGI clinicians to know their collective strength and collaborate towards solving biomedical problems together. Prof. Gowrishankar gave a node and showed his willingness that IISER would be happy to hold meetings with clinicians.
The other keynote speaker was Mr. SG Raghavender, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Law & Justice, Government of India. He played a key role in the introduction of amendments to the Copyright Act in 2012 and the introduction of the Copyright Rules, 2013. He gave crucial insights related to copyrights specific to the researchers publishing their scientific data in national and international journals. He further elaborated on the ‘related rights’ and how one should know about and protect them.
Dr. Dinesh Pankaj, Senior Principal Scientist, CSIR-CSIO, elaborated on the institute’s contribution towards biomedical device development. He further suggested that such interactive sessions open up the much-needed platform to brainstorm and develop innovative solutions to the current medical problems together.
DrAshutosh Mishra, artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI-ML) expert from IIIT, Allahabad interacted with the delegates providing him key insights related to their projects/idea(s) harnessing the poser of AI-ML. Dr. Mishra appreciated India’s young talent and envisioned that India would do well in this space in the coming time. He further emphasized that no machine can completely replace clinicians as they remain the gold standard for medical devices involved with patient care.
The invited speaker, Mr. Sumit Kumar, Scientist-C, Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) elaborated on the role of BIS towards making standards for medical devices in India. He also emphasized the clinicians’ contribution towards laying the correct testing standards ensuring safe-to-use medical devices.
Prof. S. Muttan, Eminent Professor, Anna University, Chennai, presented his talk about the need to test both types of medical devices, i.e., the developed novel medical devices and the existing devices inuse at various clinical settings. Prof. Puri further shared his experience of testing medical equipment at Biomedical Instruments and Devices hub, PGIMER, Chandigarh, and highlighted the importance of medical device testing in patient safety.
The event’s main attraction was the BID-Hub Innovation Contest 2022, where budding biomedical researchers presented more than thirty innovative ideas related to medical devices. Dr. Joseph L Mathew, Professor, PGIMER, Chandigarh, elaborated the competition rules to all the participants and encouraged them to develop innovative medical devices. The contest jury consisted of Er HS Jatana, Dr. Tanvir Samra, and Dr. Prateek Bhatia. The two-way interactive workshop allowed presenters to show their innovative ideas and compete coming from around the country.
The event was attendedby Clinicians, Engineers, Students, STARTUP’s, Medical Device Manufacturers, and budding Biomedical professionals from the region. For the first time in PGIMER, Chandigarh, the two-way interactive workshop with innovation contest was conducted, which witnessed over eighty delegates (offline mode) and over sixty participants joining through online mode.
About Biomedical Hub:
The Biomedical Instruments and Devices Hub: A Centre for Innovation, Design, and Clinical Validation BID-HUB established at Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research PGIMER, Chandigarh, with the support of the Department of Science and Technology DST, Government of India to promote indigenous development of biomedical instruments and their testing & clinical validation.
As an important milestone towards BID-Hub’s mandate, a state of art testing & calibration facility has been developed and started testing of various medical equipment currently in use at various ICUs, CCUs, OTs, and other clinical settings. The newly established calibration testing lab at Biomedical Instruments and Devices Hub, A center for excellence in biomedical devices supported by the Department of Science & Technology (DST), New Delhi, Government of India, works towards making the medical devices safer. The center is equipped with calibrated analyzers meant to perform most medical devices’ electrical safety and functional testing in various clinical settings. The dire need for such a center was realized by Prof. GD Puri and Prof Joseph L Mathew way back in 2015, thereby becoming a reality in 2018. The fully functional lab is currently doing in-house testing of types of equipment already in-use at PGIMER settings. Notably, the newly procured medical devices are also first being subjected to the in-house calibration testing center at Biomedical Instruments and Devices Hub, PGIMER, for performance and safety evaluation. This practice of testing the equipment during the demonstration or before installation in the clinics ensures critical analysis of the medical equipment regarding their accuracy and defined standards, thereby improving patient care at PGIMER and saving the cost.
Apart from calibration testing, the center for innovation also provides opportunities for new device development and clinical validation of novel and existing notified medical devices. With clinicians’ experience and expertise at PGIMER, the center can become a certifying body for the validation and testing of medical devices in the coming time, thereby solving the greatest challenge of clinical validation faced by the Medical Devices Research and Industry to strengthen the ‘Make in India’ mission.
