Georgia Tech researchers help identify the top 10 most pressing challenges to improving diabetes care in India.

With more than 200 million people suffering from or at high risk for diabetes, India is referred to as the diabetes capital of the world. And the complex challenges faced by people living with the disease suggest the need for a diverse range of technological solutions. 

So, engineers and clinicians from both India and the U.S., including Georgia Tech researchers, met recently at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) in Chennai to identify 10 priority diabetes-related challenges faced by both patients and caregivers in India — challenges that technology could solve in the next decade. The event was organized by IIT Madras’ Shankar Center of Excellence in Diabetes Research (SCoEDR), Emory Global Diabetes Research Center (EGDRC), and Georgia Tech’s Institute for People and Technology (IPaT).

The goal of developing the top 10 list was to incorporate insights from diabetes patients, healthcare professionals, and supportive family members to guide engineers and technologists in identifying key challenges that disproportionately affect people with diabetes and their caregivers. The approach aims to accelerate innovation and entrepreneurship, reducing the time needed to create affordable technological solutions that can help alleviate the burden of diabetes.

Anubama Rajan, co-head of SCoEDR, assistant professor at IIT Madras, and a member of the expert group, said that “clearly defining the problems faced by patients, their caregivers, and doctors is among the most crucial steps in developing technological solutions.”

The Top 10 Problems for Diabetes in India can now be found at stopncd.org. Jithin Sam Varghese, co-director of the EGDRC Diabetes Translational Accelerator, and member of the expert group, encourages anyone interested in developing solutions to work together. 

“There is a great need for engineers and doctors to collaborate at the very initial stages of product development to clearly define the problem a technology aims to solve,” says Varghese. “By fostering these early partnerships, we can accelerate the development of impactful solutions.” 

As a first step in generating solutions, three of the problems identified — inaccessible diabetes education; delayed detection of asymptomatic diabetic foot disease; and the lack of affordable, protective diabetic footwear — were chosen as problem statements for the DiaTech 10X – Diabetes in India Hackathon. The hackathon, which ended April 13 and had over 170 participants from India and the U.S., invited students to collaborate on innovative solutions for diabetes care. The winning teams proposed artificial intelligence-enabled solutions for diagnosing and monitoring diabetic foot disease using noninvasive approaches.

StopNCD.org strives to bridge the gap between problems, research, and real-world translation of solutions, ensuring that the most innovative solutions reach the communities that need them.

“This diabetes top 10 challenge and DiaTech 10X India hackathon were a perfect opportunity to combine the world-class expertise of Emory and IIT Madras with IPaT’s people-centered approach to technical innovations,” noted Michael Best, executive director of IPaT. “This initiative represents our shared commitment to global health and wellbeing, from Atlanta to India and beyond.”