Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), in association with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India; The Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry and The Regional Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS), Imphal, organized a Users’ Meet on “Indigenous medical devices towards Point of Care Diagnosis” in Kolkata on 14th December 2022 (Wednesday) at the heritage premises of The Bengal Chamber.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India, has awarded a R&D project titled 'ColOSENS: An Affordable Colorimetric Diagnostic Instrument' to improve healthcare at remote areas and rural localities. As a result, the latest technology 'ColOSENS'  helps in detecting diarrhea of bacterial origin  in research undertaken by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Kolkata, in collaboration with the Regional Institute of Medical Science (RIMS), Imphal. Presently the system is under field trial at RIMS, Imphal and Institute of Child Health, Kolkata.

The Meet was organized to officially launch ‘ColOSENS’ Sensingsystem and discuss on the technicalities and critical importance of Indigenous medical devices towards Point of Care Diagnosis.

The Users’ Meet provided a platform for Entrepreneurs, Start-ups, Researchers, Scientists, Engineers, Practitioners, Policymakers and Industries to present the latest research, sharing of innovative ideas, recent developments, and ICT-based applications in the domains of clinical diagnostics in general and IoT inspired health diagnosis in particular. In addition, C-DAC’s ICT-based Bio sensing System and solutions were showcased during this seminar.

The Inaugural Session featured eminent speakers like:

• Mr. Kalyan Kar, Mentor, WEBEL- BCC&I Tech Incubation Centre; Member , IT Committee , The Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Co-Founder & Managing Director, Inqube Innoventures Pvt Ltd 
• Mr. Debasis Mazumdar, Senior Director and Centre Head, C-DAC, Kolkata 
• Dr. Amit Banerjee, Chairman, ColOSENS PRSG and Pro Chancellor, Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan, Bhubaneswar 
• Shri. Rashid Shaban, Scientist ‘D’, Medical Electronics & Health Informatics Division, MeitY, Govt. of India (Online Presence) 
• Dr. Aruna lok Bhattacharya, Associate Professor, Institute of Child Health, Pediatric Medicine 
• Mr. Subho Samanta, Mentor, WEBEL- BCC&I Tech Incubation Centre and Founder, Diracsol Business Solutions Pvt. Ltd 

The Technical Session was chaired by Prof. Nabarun Bhattacharyya, Director, School of IT, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad University of Technology, West Bengal followed by presentations by:

• Prof. Rama Murthy, Advisor & Ex. Assistant Director, NICED-Kolkata spoke about Point of Care Diagnosis: Infectious Diseases Perspective 
• Dr. Arunalok Bhattacharya and Dr. Surupa Basu, ICH, Kolkata, spoke about Childhood Diarrhoea
• Team ‘ColOSENS’spoke about ColOSENS: An Affordable Colorimetric Diagnostic Instrument

• Prof. Dipankar Bandyopadhyay, Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering, IIT Guwahati (Online Presence) spoke about Real-time Monitoring of Glycaemic Starch using Biosynthesized AuNP-Amylase Composites

• Dr. Arnab Halder, Ferrosan Medical Devices, Denmark spoke about Navigating Medical Device Journey: Academia to Industry

• Mr. Rajiv Mondal, CEO, Arogyam Medisoft Pvt. Ltd., spoke about Market of PoC Devices in India

The Stakeholders’ Interactive Session having Industry – R&D labs – Academia – Startup on: ‘Indigenous Point of Care medical diagnostics devices: Lab to Commercializationhad Prof. Rajib Bandyopadhyay, Member, PRSG and Professor Department of Instrumentation and Electronics Engineering, Jadavpur University (Salt Lake Campus). The Speakers for the session who spoke about Point-Of-Care were:

• Dr. Aviral Roy, Consultant- Internal Medicine and Critical Care, Medica Superspecialty Hospital 
• Dr. Arpan Pal, Mentor, WEBEL- BCC&I Tech Incubation Centre and Chief Scientist & Head, Embedded Systems & Robotics, Research Area, TCS Research & Innovation, Tata Consultancy Services 
• Prof. Dr. Soumyajit Roy,Incubatee , WEBEL-BCC&I Tech Incubation Centre and Co-Founder, Solaire Initiative Pvt Ltd 
• Mr. Mritunjoy Bhattacharjee, Incubatee , WEBEL-BCC&I Tech Incubation Centre and Founder, Doctales
• Dr. Arnab Halder, Senior R&D Scientist, Product Innovation, Biomaterials Ferrosan Medical Devices, Denmark
• Dr. Gautam Bhattacharya, HOD - Radiation Oncology, Saroj Gupta Cancer Center & Research Institute

The Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry was pleased to organize the forum in which both technology and healthcare industries could know about the latest health technology which may help prevent diarrhoea among children - one of the major mortality cause of children below 5.