With an aim to improve maternal and newborn health, researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras have developed a virtual-reality tool to help healthcare works to take better care of both mother and child health. The IIT is working with the National Health Mission (NHM) of Tamil Nadu for this project.
An IIT Madras team at the Centre of Excellence on Virtual Reality (VR) and Haptics, called Experiential Technology Innovation Center (XTIC), has identified that skill training of the health workers was a major challenge that India was facing, specifically at the primary health centres in rural settings.
Under National Health Mission (NHM), PHC health workers in Tamil Nadu will be trained using VR, Gaming Technologies, cloud, and AI/ML, the SmartNRP tool.
Dr. Darez Ahamed IAS, Mission Director, National Health Mission Tamil Nadu, said, “If you look at Infant Mortality, the biggest contributor is Neonatal Mortality Rate (NMR) which is death within 28 days of birth. Around 40 babies are lost per every 1,000 births. We want to bring this down to single digits and all these initiatives are towards this direction. We assure that these tools will now be provided to the healthcare workers in delivery points and we will also have special training points.”
Further, Dr. Darez Ahamed said, “IIT Madras should also develop tools to train healthcare workers on various other areas such as treating accident victims, among numerous others. These tools prove that there are numerous other areas that VR can be utilized. Tamil Nadu will use these tools to improve newborn health.”
These projects are supported by CSR initiatives, funded by IndiaIdeas.com Limited (‘BillDesk ‘), read the press release by the institute.
Speaking on the occasion, Prof. V. Kamakoti, Director, IIT Madras, said, “We need to bring in technology that will be accessible to rural India, and this technology in a step in that direction. This was one of the key learnings from the COVID-19 Pandemic. I am sure Virtual Reality will make impact not only in healthcare verticals but in other areas as well. There are lots of very interesting ideas from IIT Madras Research Scholars and students. The Institute has a process by which an idea can be converted into a product and benefit the society at large.”
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