The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi and All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) New Delhi have set up a Centre for Advanced Research and Excellence in Disability & Assistive Technology (CARE-DAT), a Centre of Excellence (CoE) created under the aegis of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

IIT Delhi director V. Ramgopal Rao and AIIMS director Randeep Guleria inaugurated the centre on October 28 in the presence of dignitaries.

The mandate of the centre is to encourage comprehensive research on an identified problem with the aim of generating new knowledge and improving the holistic understanding of neurological diseases such as stroke and provide assistive technology solutions for rehabilitation of patients.

The vision of the centre is to design novel technological solutions, therapeutic protocols and clinical validation for the solutions in neuro-assistive technology and thereby providing commercial-ready technology under the ‘Make in India’ initiative of the Government of India.

The Centre for Biomedical Engineering (CBME) at IIT Delhi is already a joint centre by the two institutes. This new CoE is an outcome of active collaborative research for the last seven years by the faculty from CBME and the department of neurology at AIIMS. This collaboration has registered products developed and designed by it, filed five patents and jointly published research work.

“This new CoE, CARE-DAT, will open new avenues in design, development and clinical validation of novel products for neuro-assistive technologies in stroke rehabilitation. IIT Delhi and AIIMS faculties currently collaborate on a variety of projects and technologies. We look forward to more collaborations that will benefit the society and result in IP creation, technology transfers and incubation of startups,” said the director of IIT Delhi.

M.V. Padma Srivastava, head of the department of Neurology, and principal investigator for this CoE from AIIMS, New Delhi, said, “This is a great initiative by both the institutes. Stroke is the leading cause of mortality and morbidity in the world and in India we have a high number of patients and economic burden for rehabilitation of these patients. Innovative solutions that will be developed under this initiative will be really important in framing the future of neuro-assistive technologies in India.”

“We displayed two of the products developed at IIT Delhi, which are being clinically validated at AIIMS, New Delhi, at the inaugural function. One of these products, robotic exoskeleton for rehabilitation of the upper limb, is in Phase 3 of clinical trials, which will be part of this newly established CoE activity in the next 2 years. We envision that more products and solutions will be developed in future and this centre will be one of the pioneer facilities to encourage research in assistive technologies,” said Amit Mehndiratta from the Centre for Biomedical Engineering and the CoE’s principal investigator from IIT Delhi.