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Newsletter of IUSSTF
Indo-US Grand Challenge Initiative on Affordable Blood Pressure Measurement Technologies
for Low-Resource Settings in India and the US is a collaborative initiative of the Science &
Engineering Research Board (SERB), Department of Science & Technology, Government of
India and the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), NIH, USA. The
objective of the grand challenges was to encourage collaborative research within and between
both the countries to propose new approaches to the measurement of Blood Pressure that are
unobtrusive or passive, low cost and which can automatically provide frequent data recording
and reporting to healthcare workers as well as feed back to the patients. SERB and NIBIB launched
two separate and parallel funding opportunity announcements in India and USA respectively to
promote research in this area and generate alternate scientific approaches and technological
options. It is expected that this partnership between the two countries will leverage knowledge and
material resources to develop new technologies which are relevant for low resource settings not
only in their respective political domain but other similar settings all over the world.
Proposals were invited from Indian researchers in academic/ research institutions built around new
approaches for the measurement of Blood Pressure and resulting in technologies which are simple
at the front user end, low cost, reliable, robust and do not need any clinical expertise at the user
end. In response to the second call for proposals, after an in-depth review and evaluation process,
three proposals were selected for support.
The Principal Investigators (PI) of these three projects provide insights into their work.
CardioWatch
A comprehensive, low-cost
BP monitoring solution
CardioWatch is an affordable solution for
preventive healthcare. It is a robust,
low-cost, calibration-free blood pressure
monitoring solution for mass scale data
collection. This device can be used by the
ASHA workers and other paramedics at
sub-centers with minimal training. The data
will be automatically transmitted to a cloud
based service for reporting and analysis.
In a recently published report in Lancet,
Hypertension is (after cholesterol) the
largest killer in the world today.
High blood pressure (BP) is a major public
health problem in India and its prevalence
is rapidly increasing among both urban and
rural populations. In fact, hypertension is
the most prevalent chronic disease in India.
The prevalence of hypertension ranges from
20-40% in urban adults and 12-17% among
rural adults. The number of people with
hypertension is projected to increase from
Sujay Deb
Indraprastha Institute of
Information Technology, New Delhi
Principal Investigator
Angshul Majumdar
Indraprastha Institute of Information
Technology, New Delhi
Co-Principal Investigator
Connect • May 2016 5