IIT-H startup among top five at BioAsia summit

A startup incubated at Indian Institute of Technology-Hyderabad (IIT-H) has made it to the top-5 list from among 75 startups from India, Switzerland, Germany, Australia and the UK that took part in a competition held as part of BioAsia 2020 in Hyderabad.

The ‘Startup Stage’ contestants were short-listed from over 350 applications on the basis of the innovativeness of their products or solutions, development stage and market readiness.

The startup in question — Heamac Healthcare, incubated at the IIT-H’s Center for Healthcare Entrepreneurship (CfHE) — provides solution to neonatal jaundice management using an evolutionary phototherapy device called ‘nLite360’, which reduces by 70% the burden of the doctor struggling to treat every newborn with minimal resources available. It also reduces 35% of the total treatment time, say founders Prasad Muddam and Akitha Kolloju, who graduated from the unique one-year fellowship programme offered by the CfHE.

Kolloju credited the achievement to the biodesign fellowship program at CfHE, where she was trained to identify the need in this segment. Highlighting the role of CfHE in developing such a start-up, IIT-H director B.S. Murty said centre has been a cradle of biomedical innovations with special focus on creating social impact by addressing unmet medical needs of the rural population.