The Department of Science and Technology (DST), government of India, has allocated Rs 30 crore for the setting up of five incubation centres across the country within the next five years.

The DST has already identified two locations for setting up the centres. One is the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi and the other is the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore, said Harkesh Mittal, head, National Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board, New Delhi.

The facility at AIIMS is being set up with the assistance of Indian Institute of Technology-Mumbai, and Stanford University. The incubator would help medical students and scientists who have worked and developed biomedical products. One of the unique developments made by a team of medical scientists is the development of an innovative device by which an injection could be administered through the bone to an accident victim when it was difficult to locate the veins due to high blood pressure conditions.

Another innovative technology by a medical student is a patch known as poly skin which functions like drug eluded plaster. In this case there is no need to remove it but the only skin would fall off once the wound is healed.

There are several more unique developments in the medical field. The future is expected to provide simple and easy to use concepts to heal wounds and diagnostics, stated Mittal.

At the Indian Institute of Science, which has a dedicated Society for Innovation & Development (SID) Entrepreneurship Centre, there are several companies engaged in biotech diagnostics and bioinformatics. Among these are Bigtec and Strand Life Sciences.

While Strand has now moved out of IISc to have a dedicated facility it focuses on bioinformatics including decision-support solutions for powering drug discovery including in silico predictive models for drug properties such as ADME and Cardiotoxicity. In addition, it has an ongoing research programme in predictive modelling for hepatotoxicity.

Bigtec, a biomedical diagnostic research and development major develops simplified diagnostic kits utilizing the disciplines of MEMS, optics, molecular biology, bioinformatics and information technology. In this connection, it has started associating with scientists at IISc in the areas of infectious diseases and nanotechnology. The recent one is the development of a novel Micro Thermal Cycler Diagnostic Platform (MTCDP) which is being recommended to extend its use for H1N1 detection for the surveillance/diagnosis of swine flu.