The COVID-19 pandemic has surely hit us hard but our health workers — doctors, nurses, technicians and pathologists — have worked as a shield that dampened the virus attack. But are we doing enough on the innovation front? It is not easy to collaborate in India and researchers have complained about this more often than not. Keeping the need for more innovations in mind, Dr Jagdish Chaturvedi, a 35-year-old ENT surgeon from Bengaluru has, under the aegis of Healthcare Innovations in Indian Healthcare (HiiiH), come up with an online healthcare entrepreneurship certificate course to innovation.
We need cheaper equipment and these should be invested and made in India, said the doctor, who also claims to have more than 18 innovations to his name. Doctors often feel it is almost impossible for them to manage their medical practice and invest time in inventing apparatus that would make life much easier. "There is a lot of technology involved and a lot of processes in which a doctor doesn't really have to spend as much time as they believe. It would have worked better if there was better collaboration — like in other countries innovations are more frequent because they're all housed on the same campus. There are at least seven-eight stakeholders that are required to be critical for any invention and if they are all together it takes away half the struggle," he added.
This course aims at providing a basic and advanced certification on medical device and healthcare Innovations to improve employment in healthcare companies or help create better founders of healthcare start-up companies. This course is meant for doctors, medical students, biomedical engineers, medical electronics graduates and product designers who would like to work on a new healthcare solution. "These will be one-on-one sessions where we will discuss their ideas and how to go about it in detail. It will be confidential as we sign a Non-Disclosure Certificate with the client," said Dr Chaturvedi, and added, "The course will include a total of 20 sessions, out of which I will conduct 12 sessions and the rest will be from MedTech and healthcare gurus who run large companies like GE healthcare, Transasia, Stryker, Philps, Boston Scientific, Johnson and Johnson, Stanford Biodesign, School of international Biodesign, VC firms and leading Indian start-up co-founders who have developed and commercialised their solutions."
But what's the major handicap? Why aren't people investing? "The answer lies in how educational institutions approach ownership of the idea. Why would someone invest Rs 10 crore, for example, if the institutions want to retain 70 per cent of the royalty? But if the institute would have asked for an upfront fee and a one or two per cent royalty they would get deal," he added. "This is why a lot of the ideas get stuck. We are trying to make that flow smoother by getting them in touch with the industry as well," he said.
The course will start from 1st July 2020 to 30th September 2020. The cost for the basic programme would be INR 19,999.00 and for the advanced programme would be INR 29,999.00. (Advanced course has an additional month-long project and more stringent Certification process & therefore value)
