The seminar on 'Future of Diagnostic Devices for Infectious Diseases - the Power of Plastic Micro fluidics', conducted by the Centre for Medical Electronics wing of Anna University, Chennai has emphasized the importance of adopting appropriate technology to develop healthcare instruments for most common diseases in India.

Professor G Ravindran, director of the Centre while addressing the audience said the need to develop a state-of-the-art technology in this are would serve as a platform to facilitate healthcare services at affordable cost for all the people of the country and help reduce the cost incurred for basic instrumental services.

Professor K Sankaran from the Centre for Biotechnology in the University began his speech with the citation of the scenarios in the past that resulted in the death of several thousands due to pandemic outbreaks of infectious diseases like influenza and Cholera. He indicated the necessity of developing instruments for detection of infectious diseases. He explained his work which involved the development of detectors for bacterial pathogens. Fluorescence based sensors were developed which provided more sensitive results than any conventional methods. The concept of Antibiogram was discussed which provides the basis for prescription of antibiotics by doctors. Sankaran’s lecture was concluded by throwing light on the need for instrumentation for a variety of other infections.

Professor M Parameswaran from the School of Engineering Science & director, Institute of Micro-machine and Micro-fabrication Research, Simon Fraser University, has illustrated how this technology evolved by using glass (Plexiglas) as a material of construction. He said the method of construction using glass proved to be expensive and hence the concept of Plastic Micro-fluidics has emerged. He showed how they developed photo-resist both negative and positive moulds and how they were used to develop other micro structures.

Professor V Lakshminarayanan from Raman Research Institute, Bangalore highlighted the potential role of electro chemistry in the analysis of biological molecules and organisms. He related the recent developments in electrochemistry with micro fluidic applications in which the interaction of the analyses with chemically immobilized bio-molecules and other sensing compounds can be used for electrochemical measurements. He also pointed out the potential of electrochemically generated nanomaterials and nonmaterial-coated electrodes in the micro fluidic applications in the future.

Asia-Pacific Head of INPETO Medicals (France), Chennai, M Manivannan, delivered a lecture on the Industrial Perspective of Indian Healthcare Technology. He brought to focus the development of pharmaceutical industries in recent years due to unethical practices and compared it with the healthcare technology. He felt that these industries were thriving hard to flourish even with the potential of technology available. “This may be due to the fantasy that we have over foreign products than our own ones,” he said. He wished that this trend changes and all are resourceful technology be developed as products and marketed world wide.

The seminar was concluded with the demonstration of Antibiogram determination and the functioning of fluorescence based instrument for pathogen detection.