Two electrical engineering students from the 2018 batch studying at Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT) invented a new hand-held device to check glaucoma at one-tenth the cost of the cumbersome machine currently used by eye hospitals.
Device being used on patients in Arvind Eye Hospital, Puducherry
Vellore:
Talking to DT Next Sandal said, “the machine weighed 40 kilos, cost Rs 15 lakhs and was highly unreliable. So my classmate Dewang Gupta from Ranchi, Jharkhand and I purchased a VR (Virtual Reality) device for Rs 500, added a cell phone to it and started tinkering with it. After six improvements, we had a machine which was 85% more accurate than the one currently used, cost one-tenth of it and was portable”.
Sandal and Dewang received helped from Dr Arul Mozhi Varman, dean of the school of electrical engineering, VIT for their innovation – he was their guide when both students took up this challenge as their project for the final year submission. As the invention proved successful, both boys set up office at the VIT Technology Business Incubator (TBI), calling their start-up ‘Alfaleus Technology’ which was headquartered at Jaipur and operated from Vellore. As the word of the machine’s accuracy quickly spread, the demand for it increased.
The machine was validated by Arvind Eye Hospital and the central government’s Jawaharlal Institute for Postgraduate Medical Education and Research (JIPMER), but their biggest victory was when the John Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, USA tested their machine alongside the existing machine on 200 patients, all of whom reported highly improved results. Although the innovation is ready for commercial production, Sandal says “we are awaiting official certification before we can release the actual price”. The machine is soon to be used in South Africa as a Hyderabad based-doctor is heading there for a project.
Based on a paper on their invention presented at the first Indian Neuro Ophthalmology Annual Conference in September, it was conveyed that the device would even help patients suffering from neurological issues.
Another merit to the Alfaleus Technology was when they were one among the ten start-ups handpicked from India to participate in a joint Academia-Industry Training (AIT) between India and Switzerland. “We will be undergoing an one-week training session at New Delhi in December and then will spend a week in Switzerland in April” said Sandal.
That “necessity is the mother of invention” was proved right when Sandal Kotawala, Jaipur, Rajasthan found it difficult to repeatedly test for his glaucoma on the heavy, time consuming, and expensive visual field test machine. When he joined the electrical engineering course at VIT, he frequently made trips to the Arvind Eye Hospital, Puducherry, where he would sit uncomfortably for nearly 30 minutes on a visual field test machine to test his glaucoma. When he asked doctors why the machine could not be made more comfortable and less expensive, they suggested that he as a budding engineer could try his hand at developing it.
Talking to DT Next Sandal said, “the machine weighed 40 kilos, cost Rs 15 lakhs and was highly unreliable. So my classmate Dewang Gupta from Ranchi, Jharkhand and I purchased a VR (Virtual Reality) device for Rs 500, added a cell phone to it and started tinkering with it. After six improvements, we had a machine which was 85% more accurate than the one currently used, cost one-tenth of it and was portable”.
Sandal and Dewang received helped from Dr Arul Mozhi Varman, dean of the school of electrical engineering, VIT for their innovation – he was their guide when both students took up this challenge as their project for the final year submission. As the invention proved successful, both boys set up office at the VIT Technology Business Incubator (TBI), calling their start-up ‘Alfaleus Technology’ which was headquartered at Jaipur and operated from Vellore. As the word of the machine’s accuracy quickly spread, the demand for it increased.
The machine was validated by Arvind Eye Hospital and the central government’s Jawaharlal Institute for Postgraduate Medical Education and Research (JIPMER), but their biggest victory was when the John Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, USA tested their machine alongside the existing machine on 200 patients, all of whom reported highly improved results. Although the innovation is ready for commercial production, Sandal says “we are awaiting official certification before we can release the actual price”. The machine is soon to be used in South Africa as a Hyderabad based-doctor is heading there for a project.
Based on a paper on their invention presented at the first Indian Neuro Ophthalmology Annual Conference in September, it was conveyed that the device would even help patients suffering from neurological issues.
Another merit to the Alfaleus Technology was when they were one among the ten start-ups handpicked from India to participate in a joint Academia-Industry Training (AIT) between India and Switzerland. “We will be undergoing an one-week training session at New Delhi in December and then will spend a week in Switzerland in April” said Sandal.