When not pursuing their profession, a breed of doctors prefer to wear different hats to keep themselves fit and centered. The HEALTH PIONEER tries to catch up with them every week.
This doctor has several medical innovations to his name ever since the bug bit him in 2008 when he was still an MBBS student. But that’s just one of his talents. He's a standup comedian, an author and an entrepreneur too.
When this multifaceted ENT surgeon, Dr Jagdish Chaturvedi from Fortis Hospital, Bengaluru, tells you that his contributions have been a game-changer in the medical field, especially in rural areas, he’s not exaggerating. In the last 10 years, Dr Jagdish’s 18 innovations include the bowel cleaning device, esophageal varices management device, medicine management box, and adaptive noise cancellation for Tinnitus among others. Low-cost and easy to use, to make healthcare accessible in rural areas, are the hallmark of his innovations.
As an entrepreneur, Dr Jagdish runs a digital platform, Healthcare Innovation for Indian Healthcare (Hiiih), a medical entrepreneurship and innovation-enabling platform that sees doctors, engineers and entrepreneurs connecting and working on innovations.
“The platform has helped 40 Indian startups in terms of guidance, funding, product development and more. We also conduct training programmes and develop our own devices,” he says.
Dr Jagdish's first invention was a cheap alternative to the expensive imaging equipment to diagnose throat cancer. After seeing the results of his ‘jugaad’, he decided to build a prototype and eventually launched it in the market to help more doctors practising in rural areas. Though there were no takers for his first innovation, he was not deterred.
“I faced flak from my fraternity, who advised me to stick to my job instead of capitalizing on the prototype. But I did not give up and gave the license to Icarus, who then sold it to Medtronic. It uses the third-generation Medtronic Shruti ENTraview Otoscope (attached to an Android phone). It has helped around seven lakh people,” he
says proudly.
It was good learning for him. With help from his seniors like Dr Ravi Nair, he enrolled himself in a Stanford bio-design program in 2012. “I learnt how to approach a design and bring a solution while keeping factors like affordability and accessibility in mind. The fellowship made my second innovation a smooth ride,” he says.
His Noxeno, a device that removes foreign bodies from the noses of children in rural areas, without needing any invasive surgery is being used across 1,000 hospitals and was even featured in News Asia’s documentary ‘Field Guide to Innovations’ in 2017. His other invention--a tele examination system can be used by doctors while sitting anywhere in the world.
He has also penned three books, Inventing Medical Devices – A perspective from India, The Benefits of Failing Successfully and One year of Stand up comedy: A Journey in India.
A standup comedian, Dr Jagdish’s eponymous YouTube channel has over 1 lakh subscribers while a comic awareness video on the coronavirus had 1,62,000 viewership. Fun and serious work goes hand-in-hand for him.
(Medicos may write to us at healthp100@gmail.com)
