India is passing through a point of inflection, where start-ups are poised to create more job opportunities compared to conventional industry sectors. Many millennials born in early 21st century are seizing this opportunity to dive in and solve unmet needs of society through innovation and entrepreneurship.

We are however, yet to see global success stories of 'Made in India' products. The progress is slow, because most real-life problems are multi-disciplinary in nature and require collaboration between experts with different backgrounds.

There are 'valleys of death' between ideation, invention, innovation and impaction. Thousands of innovators who have incubated their start-ups are struggling to bring their products into the market. A conducive and supportive ecosystem is required to overcome these challenges.

1. Universal Need:

Everyone will at some point of time, be concerned about health, as diseases and disabilities affect the lives of people as well as others around them. India needs 50,000 crore rupees worth of medical devices every year.

However, we are importing over 80 per cent of these from foreign companies, which are unaffordable to the majority of the population. There is continuous demand from the doctors for better, safer, suitable, reliable, affordable, adaptable, available and accessible medical devices. All these give many directions to come up with innovative medical devices.

2. Technology Drivers:

New technologies such as CAD, 3D scanning, 3D printing, medical imaging, Cloud computing, virtual and augmented reality, artificial intelligence, machine learning and blockchain are opening new possibilities to rethink even conventional devices. For example, the Ayu stethoscope module invented at BETIC allows converting conventional stethoscopes into digital devices, with sound enhancement, noise cancellation, recording and sharing. Doctors are finding it very useful for rural medical camps and telemedicine.

Imported medical devices are unaffordable to the majority of the population. Frugal innovation makes it possible to bring down the cost of diagnosis or treatment to less than one-tenth. In particular, screening devices, such as those for diabetic foot ulcer and glaucoma developed at BETIC, allow early interventions, thereby preventing expensive treatments otherwise required. Further, healthcare has become the largest employer in the USA (13 per cent of population), and is becoming the top sector targeted by start-ups in India (after e-commerce).

4. Funding Support:

Given the above reasons, it is not surprising that healthcare has become one of the top priorities for government and non-government funding agencies. The ministries of science & technology; health and family welfare; electronics and information technology; micro, small and medium enterprises and others along with their arms (such as department of biotechnology) have many schemes to support researchers, innovators and entrepreneurs working in this field. Industry is pitching in through corporate social responsibility funds. Private investors are waiting for success stories to emerge.

As mentioned earlier, innovation requires collaboration, which in turn requires going out of one's comfort zone and embrace risk as well as failures that are bound to occur (else it is not novel enough).

In healthcare, the primary focus is to prevent or alleviate the suffering of the common person, and this provides the required motivation to overcome personal mental blocks as well as inter-personal barriers. Moreover, there are many doctors who in their heart wanted to be engineers, and vice versa. We just need to bring these two together and put them in touch with other stakeholders; the rest will follow.

The Biomedical Engineering and Technology Innovation Centre is located at IIT Bombay, with satellite centres in six engineering colleges and seven medical institutes across Maharashtra. The initiative is envisioned and supported by S&T Council of Maharashtra Government and DST, New Delhi, to accelerate indigenous development of affordable medical devices suitable for local manufacture and use.

In the last five years, the BETIC team developed and filed patents for over 50 devices, and licensed 20 of them to start-up companies or industry partners. To know more, visit: http://www.betic.org.

Authored by Professor B Ravi, innovator, educator, mentor and founder of BETIC, IIT Bombay

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Here's how healthcare can build effective ecosystem for innovation, entrepreneurship - India Today