The Madras Diabetes Research Foundation and the University of Dundee, Scotland, will screen residents of 25 villages in Kancheepuram district shortly for diabetes.
The two institutions will conduct the screening in Cheyyur taluk of the district as part of the TREND (Telemedicine Project for Screening Diabetes and its complications in rural Tamil Nadu) project. MDRF president V. Mohan said the main objective was to implement next generation precision telemedicine in rural India.
“In rural India, telemedicine is a valuable, cost-effective and reliable tool for screening people with diabetes and associated complications,” he said.
Guha Pradeepa, senior scientist and head of research operations at MDRF, said: “We began screening in November 2018 and we are building a vast body of knowledge on the impact of diabetes in the most rural parts of southern India.”
According to the Foundation’s vice-president R.M. Anjana, data on lifestyle, physical activity, demographic characteristics, diet and medical history had been gathered. “We can even genotype whole genomes with the blood samples collected, which means genetic factors leading to diabetes can be identified early,” she said.
TREND project
The TREND project is a sub-study of the INSPIRED project, a £7 million research collaboration between the Foundation and the University, which hosts more than 20 research groups.
In 2017, the University was awarded funding from the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) Global Health programme to establish a Scotland-India clinical partnership to combat diabetes, twinning its expertise with Dr. Mohan’s Diabetes Specialities Centres and MDRF.
Colin Palmer, Director, NIHR Global Health research team, said, “The mobile clinic has the potential to break the barriers to early diagnosis and we are excited to see the results.”