CHENNAI : With an aim to address the problems in maternal and child healthcare sector in the country using new technologies, the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IITM) has signed a research collaboration agreement with Translational Health Science and Technology Institute (THSTI), an autonomous institute of the Department of Biotechnology functioning under the Union Ministry of Science and Technology, said a statement issued by the institute.
The agreement was signed on Friday at the IITM-THSTI conclave on ‘Transforming Maternal and Child Healthcare Using Data Science’ on Friday. Speaking about this collaboration, Karthik Raman, a faculty of Biotechnology Department of IIT-M, said THSTI is an expert agency conducting studies on different diseases including public health problems related to maternal and child health.
The vast and detailed data collected by the THSTI on pregnancy outcomes will be analysed by IITM using data science and other technologies to create models to help doctors reduce maternal and child mortality rates in India.“There are many issues such as gestational diabetes, pre-term babies, impact of environmental pollution on the maternal and baby healthcare, nutrition issues and immune response to vaccines. By using the data of THSTI , we can analyse the reasons and develop India-specific models to deal with these problems,” said Raman.
The broad objectives of this collaboration include bringing physician-scientists, biologists, engineers and data scientists together to solve public health problems related to maternal and child health, applying advanced analytical approaches for prediction of adverse pregnancy outcomes, childhood morbidity and mortality and other serious problems faced in the sector.
Highlighting the importance of this collaboration, Gagandeep Kang, executive director, THSTI, said, “Our ability to understand, predict and manage human health is changing rapidly with the application of new technologies. The analysis of the massive data sets generated by these studies is a critical need for which there has, so far, been limited capacity in India.”
Himanshu Sinha, Associate Professor, Department of Biotechnology, IIT Madras, said, “We are very excited about this collaboration between THSTI and IITM as it will give us access to one of the most comprehensive and detailed Indian datasets on pregnancy outcomes being conducted by THSTI. We will analyse this dataset to develop India-specific models.”