Topic: A blood test without bleeding Seminar Talk by Myshkin Ingawale: About the Talker: Myshkin Ingawale is the

co-founder of Biosense Technologie In this witty and inspiring talk, TED Fellow Myshkin Ingawale describes how he and his team created a simple, portable, low-cost device that can test for anemia without pricking. One day it so happened that Abhishek, a friend of the talker, was delivering baby in a place named Parol located in the north of Mumbai. But after his return, the talker found out that the mother as well as the child died. The most shocking part of this incident was that the deaths happened due to Post partum hemorrhage, a case where severe internal bleeding occurs, which is entirely due to undiagnosed anemia. Anemia is a completely curable disease still it is causing deaths in childbirth in many places around the world. There are very cheap and easily available tablets for anemia. This made his team to think on this issue persisting in the world that how a disease which is very much curable can cause death of many people in the world. He describes how anemia test is typically done which is invasive and slow. Moreover, this kit is not possible to be made available all over the world. So he listed down various constraints to be considered to invent a device which will serve the purpose being discussed. The constraints are: 1) No needles or pricking 2) Ease to operate 3) which can be carried in the kit of a nurse. So they started to build the device and tried for about 32 times to finally get the device ready. This device will basically operate on batteries and has a cable coming out of it which has to be held on a finger. The device will measure the following information corresponding to a human body: 1) Hemoglobin 2) Oxygen level and 3) Pulse rate. The device when held on a finger in about 20sec will display the measured values. The basic functioning of the device is a light wave is passed through the cable which is passed through the tissues. Depending on how much of the light is transmitted, scattered and absorbed the value of hemoglobin is predicted. This basically is based on the principle named Photoplethysmography. This device is named as ToucHB quick. The talk was very inspiring as it shows how a simple thought of the engineers helps in eradicating many small issues still persisting in the world.