Under the Indo-US Grand Challenge Initiative, India and the US will soon begin collaborative research for finding affordable blood pressure (BP) measurement technologies for low resource settings in India and the US.

According to senior officials in the Department of Science & Technology (DST), the purpose of this Indo-US Grand Challenge Initiative between Science & Engineering Research Board (SERB), DST, Government of India and the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), NIH, USA is to encourage collaborative research within and between both the countries to propose new approaches to the measurement of BP that are unobtrusive or passive, low cost and which can automatically provide frequent data recording and reporting to healthcare workers as well as feed back to the patients.

Both the SERB and the NIBIB have launched two separate and parallel, funding opportunity announcements in India and USA respectively to promote research in this area and generate alternate scientific approaches and technological options.

DST officials further said that this partnership between the two countries will leverage knowledge and material resources to develop new technologies which are relevant for low resource settings not only in their respective political domain but other similar settings all over the world.

The DST has invited proposals from Indian researchers in academic / research institutions built around new approaches for the measurement of BP and resulting in technologies which are simple at the front user end, low cost, reliable, robust and do not need any clinical expertise at the user end. Such technologies may either be focused on minimum interaction devices for personal usage in home environment or high through put systems for quick measurement and recording of a large population.

The primary focus of the work should be “accurate measurement” and “simplicity & ruggedness” of the device, doing away the need of cuffs and clinical expertise to carry out the measurement.

The initiative of the DST in this regards is of importance as hypertension diagnosis and management is a critical healthcare issue. However, the basic underlying approach for the measurement of Blood Pressure has essentially remained the same for the past several decades. This is an obvious area that is ripe for disruptive technological innovation.
All Indians having adequate research background and formal affiliation to academic institutions, research laboratories and non-profit R&D institutions are eligible to submit proposals, as lead investigators.