New collaboration in affordable healthcare supported by SIN

We’re always delighted to hear when researchers we’ve worked with have been able to get a new collaboration going. Recently, researchers at the Indian Institute for Science and the University of Oxford inaugurated an exciting new project together on affordable prosthetics. This project was particularly close to our hearts as it had been initiated by Professor Sanjay Biswas, who is sorely missed by all involved. We asked Dr Mark Thompson to tell us about how the project got going…

The loss of an arm and hand through amputation following an accident has a drastic effect on the victim. If the victim is also the main wage earner in a family, as is frequent in India, the impact on dependents can be even greater. Providing the victim with a prosthetic hand and rehabilitation at an early stage can boost their chances of regaining ability with their arm and returning to productive work. However, prostheses are either not affordable for the large majority of the Indian population or unsuitable for sustainable use and maintenance.

The Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (IISc) has made a breakthrough with new concepts for the design of affordable prostheses and thanks to seed funding from the UK Science & Innovation Network (SIN) these will now be developed in partnership with the University of Oxford with 4 years of project funding (a total of approximately £1 million) from the Wellcome Trust.

SIN supported this from the beginning through enabling the face-to-face meeting time required to build the relationships behind this success. Through their Global Partnerships Fund, SIN supported visiting IISc Centenary lectures by Professor Lionel Tarassenko and Professor Alison Noble from the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at Oxford in 2010, providing the initial contact. A large delegation from IISc headed by Professor Sanjay Biswas visited Oxford University in 2012, also supported in this way. Support was also provided for my extended visit to IISc in 2013, also followed by a further visit by Professor Biswas to Oxford.

The international collaboration, now supported by the Wellcome Trust aims to develop these prosthetic designs and ready them for commercial manufacture. The IISc, with its expertise in affordable and appropriate design, will work together with biomechanics and clinical trials experts at the University of Oxford and with experts in commercialisation at both centres. This international partnership will ensure the new design ideas from IISc have a major impact on affordable healthcare in India.

This project is however only the first in an anticipated programme of activities in a partnership which SIN has enabled.

(Mark Thompson, Oxford)