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Following the successful first and second series of Unlocking the SDGs – A Blueprint for the Future, Professor Monica Lakhanpaul and Professor Priti Parikh are back with a deep dive into the UN SDGs. Over five episodes, the series considers issues including the role of AI and education in the SDGs and what other countries are doing to achieve the goals. Listen as academics from across UCL’s faculties and beyond bring new perspectives and understanding to this complex global issue.
00:00:12 Speaker 1
Welcome back to the third series of unlocking the SDG's, a blueprint for the future. In this podcast, we explore the UN Sustainable Development Goals, or SDG's, and what they mean for society.
00:00:28 Speaker 1
I'm Professor Priti Parikh, professor of infrastructure engineering and International Development at the Bartlett UCL School of Sustainable Construction.
00:00:37 Speaker 2
And I'm Professor Monica Lakhanpaul, professor of integrated community child health in the UCL Great Ormond St Institute for Child Health. In this episode, we're taking a special focus on the role of the SDG's on research in India.
00:00:53 Speaker 2
And how Indian researchers are contributing to reaching the goals as part of U sales partnership with two of India's most prestigious universities, IIT Delhi and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences. Today we're speaking to two Indian academics to learn a bit more about their research and their work with UCL.
00:01:17 Speaker 1
Our first guest today is Professor Sumit Malhotra from the centre of Community Medicine at Ames, welcoming Professor Malhotra. It's good to have you joining us today. Can you tell us a bit more about your role as Professor of Community Medicine?
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Thank you, Professor Priti. Hello everyone. I teach the discipline of community medicine to undergraduate and postgraduate medical and nursing students. And primarily I teach them primary healthcare practise and making them understand.
00:01:51 Speaker 3
How primary Healthcare is so vital for achieving different accomplishments within the scenario of healthcare for all, I connect them to communities and make them understand how it's important to work in synergies with different communities so that.
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The health interventions are closer to them. They are available and accessible to them and I teach lot of mixed methods research in order to enhance the research capacity of faculty and scientists based at Ames.
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Deli.
00:02:26
And outside.
00:02:27 Speaker 1
I think mixed methods and engagement and participatory techniques where communities are brought on board to Co design Co develop solutions. I think it's key in music to our ears and Monica and I have been working quite closely as experts from health and engineering to do precisely that to bring together.
00:02:48 Speaker 1
Those community voices to make sure healthcare solutions are embedded and are acceptable.
00:02:54 Speaker 2
Thank you so much Smith for joining us today. We're in two different countries, but actually it's all one world and listening to you and what you do.
00:03:01 Speaker 2
Do and listening to the work that we do here in the UK, we often actually learn from each other. So between India and between the UK, there's often being bidirectional knowledge exchange, exchanging ideas and one area that we can touch on with you really is around non communicable diseases. We in the UK are struggling with.
00:03:22 Speaker 2
Increasing rates of diabetes, increasing heart disease, increasing obesity.
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City rates and this is growing worldwide, a huge problem everywhere and we have to really come together to tackle those problems as a group really rather than individually. The World Health Organisation as we know has set some very, very ambitious targets linked to the goals.
00:03:42 Speaker 2
And we're really trying to reduce premature deaths. So I'm just wondering if you can tell us how you and your team have been trying to tackle this.
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Yeah.
00:03:51 Speaker 3
So I do agree that almost 60 to 65% of mortality, you know India and otherwise globally also now is contributed by non communicable diseases.
00:04:03 Speaker 3
So definitely this is an agenda that needs to be focused and it has to be tackled and our primary healthcare systems currently are grappling with how to take up this agenda given that we also have the needs in other areas. I am engaged with one of the National Health Research priority project.
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Which is commissioned by Indian Council of Medical Research.
00:04:27 Speaker 3
Our Government of India and the project is titled * NCD and that star stands for strengthening ambulatory care for non communicable diseases. This is a multi site implementation research project. There are four sites currently and I lead the North Indian site that is in Haryana. There's a district called Faridabad.
00:04:48 Speaker 3
And what we are trying to do in this particular project is to strengthen the ambulatory care, particularly targeting diabetes, hypertension, chronic airway diseases, you know, chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases.
00:05:02 Speaker 3
And to an extent, the secondary prevention for cardiovascular diseases, you know the hypertension prevalence, high blood pressure prevalence is around 23% in Haryana and the diabetes prevalence is 12%. Now if we see what is the reach of people being diagnosed and put on treatment is hardly 11:50.
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Percent and those who are achieving a control of their, you know, blood sugar and blood pressure status is just 5 to 6%.
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So if we see there is so much gap that exists in terms of those who need the treatment are not being, you know, catered and are not being under treatment, so definitely.
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We are far.
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From reaching the status of control amongst those who are affected with chronic conditions, so this project with the background of inequity.
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Hence, we want to see how we can enhance the coverage and quality.
00:05:58 Speaker 3
Of non communicable disease services within the realm of non communicable disease programme implemented in primary healthcare settings. While the critical thing that we are witnessing with human resources is the motivation, and I think our staff on ground requires a lot of motivation and support and this as well the very important.
00:06:19 Speaker 3
Human resource element.
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In which the programmes, when they operate, they miss and the another very important element is about, you know, the digital ecosystem. So the non communicable disease programme and in the context in which the programme is functional and monitored, is through a portal and that digital interface.
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With the different actors involved in the delivery, there are some issues and challenges, so we are going to, you know, build a model so that the delivery of care is.
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And ultimately, how this is going to be impacting this is going to increase the coverage and quality.
00:06:57 Speaker 2
Thank you, summit. That's you're so interesting for a number of different reasons. You brought up the issues around reach, coverage, motivation and you know, one thing we struggle with as well in the UK is around thinking about the health system as a whole. It's a very, very complex system.
00:07:13 Speaker 2
And you've so eloquently really explained the need not just to think about the medication that you're going to give to people, but also the whole system approach and the implementation as well.
00:07:24 Speaker 1
And there's an engineer. I'm also really excited about the advances made in digital technologies, artificial intelligence.
00:07:34 Speaker 1
And you know what benefits that can bring to the table? And so I know you've been working with the new CSL team on developing digital healthcare innovations to better support new natural health outcomes. I would love to hear more about what that involves.
00:07:50
Yeah.
00:07:51 Speaker 3
So this is another project and within the Haryana another very challenging district. So within this particular you know geography, the newborn maternal mortality is quite high. So what we are doing in partnership with UCLA, we are trying to understand how currently the newborn care.
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Services are being provided within the you know, facilities and largely the district hospitals and the other secondary care.
00:08:20 Speaker 3
Networks of community health centres we are trying to see and understand, you know, what are the current challenges in terms of delivery of care? What is the quantum of newborn care, admissions, discharges and what kind of care and process flows are being followed with also assessment of digital readiness?
00:08:41 Speaker 3
In order to integrate some of the digital interventions, as you rightly mentioned that the digital technology is a way forward and we need to integrate and equip our, you know, health facilities and also the health functionaries in order to leverage upon the potential that it carries. So currently.
00:09:02 Speaker 3
We are in phase of data collection and this is inspired by the new 3 project which has been tested in Zimbabwe and Malawi, wherein integration of digital decision support systems have been tried. Experiment.
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Coupled with quality improvement approaches.
00:09:24 Speaker 1
I mean, this is really exciting. I mean, not just the kind of systemic approach, but I like.
00:09:29 Speaker 1
To phrase the.
00:09:29 Speaker 1
News on digital readiness. It almost feels that once is made in digital technologies, that deployment that is further ahead than kind of academia than the work that the scientists are doing so.
00:09:44 Speaker 1
It's really excited to see that you are kind of embracing this change and looking at deploying those technologies. Overall standard healthcare systems and prioritisation as well because in the resource chattered setting.
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You have to really.
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Prioritise where you put your resources to achieve the both impact.
00:10:03 Speaker 2
Just to pick up on that a little bit, it's an exciting project for me to have followed as well because I was with my colleague when this project was a bit of a foetus really and then it was born in Malawi and now it's growing up and spreading its wings. I've seen the life course.
00:10:18 Speaker 2
Of the near tree in front of my eyes and to see it now you know land in India as well. With such a large population and such a need.
00:10:25 Speaker 2
Is just shows us really how we can move to address global problems together, not just in Malawi, not just in India, but then take it across other areas of need as well and through this exciting partnership of aims IT Delhi and ourselves at UCLA, it really shows that overlap.
00:10:46 Speaker 2
Between technology, healthcare and also delivery of care and implementation as well. And that takes me really to another age group. You know, we've talked about different age groups today already the adults, the neonates, but also now we mustn't forget the adolescents as.
00:11:04 Speaker 2
Well, and we've gone through a very difficult time with young people recently. They've had to go through COVID. They've had a lot of challenges in the past few years and many, many have been struggling. How did they experience loneliness, depression, anxiety, things that?
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Many of us don't really talk about because the stigma as well about discussing this.
00:11:25 Speaker 2
So really interested to hear about your role in this space as well.
00:11:29 Speaker 3
Yes, and this age group is so dear to my, you know, heart and often neglected. But I think this requires a lot of investment. And you rightly said, you know, COVID times has actually made the realisation of these problems in younger age group now it's so visible.
00:11:49 Speaker 3
That the adolescent mental health issue.
00:11:52 Speaker 3
Those are so common now in terms of developmental trajectory transition from schools to colleges and university settings is a big change in schools. You are more controlled, you're more disciplined. But as you move to the colleges, there is lot of autonomy. There is lot of change and.
00:12:12 Speaker 3
Some cop up and some are not able to cope up this. This change, and often children when they come from the secondary school settings to higher educational settings. I think there are a number of challenges.
00:12:26 Speaker 3
That they have to face some may have language barriers. Some may not be used to the kind of setting. There are relationship issues that happened in this particular age group. Apart from that, the academic pressures and stresses also are important. So India has one of the one of the kind of in terms of magnitude.
00:12:48 Speaker 3
Highest numbers of adolescents, young adults, emerging adults, you may call them. So what we're trying to do is develop a model of university.
00:12:57 Speaker 3
Based peer education, peer LED adolescent or young adult mental health literacy programme. So we are trying to connect with universities in order to train these champions or advocates who can actually, you know, set the stage for mental health.
00:13:17 Speaker 3
Advocacy and enhancing literacy. We just finished with our initial, you know, pilot trainings and everybody is so welcoming this initiative because the universities now have to have mental health interventions in place. So I think this is a very, very important area.
00:13:37 Speaker 2
Thank you so much. Let I'm sure in the future we'll be coming back to you to really extend ideas on this, because whether you're an IT, Delhi, whether we're names, whether in UCL, we have to support our students more effectively. We have mentorship programmes, but we have a lot of overseas students as well who will have different challenges than our home students.
00:13:57 Speaker 2
And I really look forward to meeting up again to discuss some of the solutions to the challenges with you.
00:14:03 Speaker 3
Yes, definitely. I look forward to, you know, having more solutions. And as you right.
00:14:08 Speaker 3
We said we are different parts of the globe, but the concerns are common and some of the solutions there is so much learning that has to be cross learning.
00:14:17 Speaker 2
So thank you so much for joining us today to share all your experience and knowledge and really what's to come and we're very excited to come to India to meet with you all and take some of this project with all my colleagues at UCLA. So thank you so much for joining us today. Please let us know how people could reach out to you if they want to.
00:14:37 Speaker 3
Yeah. So I do have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram accounts. And you know, those interested can find me, you know, Summit Malhotra or Doctor Summit, Malhotra, CCM aims.
00:14:53 Speaker 2
Now our 2nd guest today is Professor PVM Rao. Professor Rao is from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at IIT Delhi and Professor Rao, welcome to you. Your research specialises on how assistive technology can support.
00:15:08 Speaker 2
Blind and visually impaired people, which obviously touches on a number of different goals, good health and.
00:15:15 Speaker 2
Or being quality education, gender equality, decent work and economic growth, reduce inequalities and a few others as well. So could you really tell us a little bit more about what you're working on at IIT Delhi?
00:15:29 Speaker 4
Thanks for having me on this podcast UCL. I think we are working.
00:15:35 Speaker 4
To empower people, visual impairment and blindness.
00:15:38 Speaker 4
For now, almost 2 decades for last two decades, we are actually looking at assistive technology needs, particularly in the area of mobility and education. These two are very important because they are also precursor for someone to be employed. And I think the once you are able to take care of mobility and education.
00:16:01 Speaker 4
The employment becomes very easier and a lot of empowerment happens through employment.
00:16:07 Speaker 4
We initially started looking at assistive technologies for people to be independently mobile.
00:16:14 Speaker 4
And one of the very first products which we came up was called as the smart cane, the smart cane basically helps people to negotiate obstacles from knee to head height. So smart gain is in the form of a A sensor which is mounted on a white cane. It uses Sonic sensing and vibratory feedback.
00:16:35 Speaker 4
To alert people when they are mobile about any upper body collisions or possible collision.
00:16:42 Speaker 4
And interestingly, this particular product also has a British connection because welcome trust UK actually gave a very liberal funding and we could actually take it to the market and now this product is used by more than 150,000 people.
00:17:03 Speaker 4
In 25.
00:17:04 Speaker 4
Trees and there are a lot of people who are now independently mobile using a a smart cake. So this was one of our very early flagship products. There are two more needs in the mobility which we are working. 1 is how do you make a public bus accessible to a visually.
00:17:24 Speaker 4
Blind person was the another challenge which most of the people in India for.
00:17:30 Speaker 4
It's.
00:17:31 Speaker 4
So we have come up with technology based solution, basically RF based solution where the people can now detect the bus which has come a particular number. But apart from that they can also know where the entrance to the bus is so that they can board the bus without sighted assistance and.
00:17:52 Speaker 4
Currently we are actually putting these devices in thousand buses in Bangalore city and another 500 devices in Mysore and people are extremely accounted to have this device so that they can be mobile independent.
00:18:10 Speaker 4
And the third mobility device where we actually worked closely with Ucn, particularly with GDI Hub and the faculty we we work with Kathy Holloway and Tigmanshu Bhatnagar to also look at wayfinding for visually blind people, particularly when they are in public.
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Spaces like a building or let's say a mall or a hospital, if they have to move from one particular place to other place. So now we have a a very interesting.
00:18:42 Speaker 4
App developed by one of our spin offs called IV Plus. This particular app helps people to move from one particular location in a indoor spaces to another location without sighted assistance and we had already a quite a few implementations of this product. One of the first implementations was.
00:19:04 Speaker 4
In All India Institute of Medical Sciences in ophthalmology department now we have put this entire campus of All India Institute of Medical Sciences Jammu which has this.
00:19:17 Speaker 4
Wayfinding app. But we have also put it in few of the universities and other community places for people to use and this is 1 area where we had a very close collaboration with UCLA. The collaboration was more in terms of exchange of PhD students in terms of.
00:19:37 Speaker 4
Writing a joint research papers, we also had a seed funding the IIT Delhi, UCLA. In this particular space.
00:19:45 Speaker 1
Thank you so much and these are brilliant examples of how universities.
00:19:51 Speaker 1
In UK and India can join forces, arm some critical challenges facing society, because for me, the challenges we've discussed today, whether they're mental health or inclusive cities where every person has equal access to opportunities, are able to move around cities with dignity and respect is so fundamental.
00:20:11 Speaker 1
And once again, there's a team around absent digital innovation and technologies to enable people to have better lives, improved health and well-being. So it's absolutely fantastic.
00:20:23 Speaker 1
To hear these examples and your collaboration, of course, with the global Disability Innovation Hub, which seems to be flourishing and I wanted to kind of dig a little bit deeper into the partnership and how you feel that this partnership is kind of enhancing adding value to sustainable development.
00:20:41 Speaker 1
Goals, if I may.
00:20:42 Speaker 4
I think this partnership is actually coming up very well. I'll just give a a very specific example in the space of education. One of the challenges which most of the school and university students face, particularly with the stem.
00:20:57 Speaker 4
Mission he is accessing the pictorial content. The text is easily accessible either through speech or through brain. But when it comes to pictures and text books, it's very difficult for visually challenged people to actually gather the information and particularly in India, we did not have.
00:21:18 Speaker 4
Stem books, which were accessible to.
00:21:20 Speaker 4
Fine. So now we are actually working on development of tactile books and we have taken our school books from up to the Grade 12 and converted them into books with the tactile diagrams so that students can now very easily study.
00:21:41 Speaker 4
Subjects such as geography and alchemy at trigonometry, which require a strong pictorial interaction to learn, and in this space, as we are actually working on a development of this tactile books, we also had a joint.
00:21:59 Speaker 4
Project with UCLA to develop refreshable tactile graphics, which is probably a future technology where instead of creating an individual book for every subject you would like to probably have a refreshable tactile tablet which can actually create any diagram which you want to access.
00:22:20 Speaker 4
As and when the need arises, so this is definitely one major example of.
00:22:26 Speaker 4
CL and IT daily working together and if if you're able to succeed, particularly in making education accessible.
00:22:35 Speaker 2
Giving them. I've heard a lot about the amazing work you've done to really ensure that your technologies are user centred to enable them to be Co developed and Co produced with the communities that actually are using the technologies. Be very interesting to hear how you're addressing that Co development of your technologies.
00:22:55 Speaker 2
In your institute or in your research area.
00:22:58 Speaker 4
I fully agree with you that the space of assistive technology, it's a really a core creation.
00:23:04 Speaker 4
Place firstly you need various disciplines to come together. The engineering, social sciences, the design is 1 aspect, but most of these products which we develop, we work as a consortia. So the consortia consists of for example universities as R&D partners. Then we work with.
00:23:25 Speaker 4
More than 50 organisations in India which are actually trying to empower people with blindness, and these organisations give us the basically a window to reach out to the user.
00:23:39 Speaker 4
So that we can actually do need validation and solution validation quickly because they have a large pool of users available who are trying to help us in developing this product faster, cheaper and better. And also whenever we are working particularly in these, we're also trying to look at.
00:23:57 Speaker 4
How do we?
00:23:58 Speaker 4
Basically, take it beyond the labs so we do have two models. Either we give these technologies to and industries to basically do a technology transfer to an industry to produce.
00:24:11 Speaker 4
It a second option is there were quite a few products which actually went as a spin offs from the lab where some of our own lab employees were able to take it up as startups. And we do have a few startups coming up from the lab itself.
00:24:28 Speaker 2
Thank you. And and talking about startups, what I understand is that you're also going to be at the Bengaluru Tech Summit, which I understand GDI Hub are also going to be there.
00:24:39 Speaker 2
Yeah.
00:24:40 Speaker 2
And.
00:24:40 Speaker 2
What I've heard is that you'll be working on a joint accelerator programme to support startups in pitching for funding. Could you tell us a little bit more about that?
00:24:49 Speaker 4
Sure, UCL and IIT Delhi came together a few months back. We realised that he the knowledge which both the organisations can have can help the new startups greatly because particularly when it comes to assistive technology in new budding entrepreneur who is trying to build and assist you.
00:25:09 Speaker 4
Technology requires knowledge, which covers multiple dimensions.
00:25:14 Speaker 4
There is a medical dimension. There is a social dimension, there is a technology dimension. There is a design and there is a business dimension. And interestingly, UCL and IIT Delhi, particularly the global GDI hub, has enough expertise and to transfer this knowledge to new startups. With this in mind.
00:25:34 Speaker 4
We actually started.
00:25:36 Speaker 4
A new accelerator programme a few months back it is called athun athun, also in Sanskrit.
00:25:44 Speaker 4
Basically translates as an acceleration.
00:25:47 Speaker 4
So this accelerator programme now has 20 startups which are working to develop assistive technologies and for last 3-4 months we actually trained them in multiple aspects of assistive technologies and also trying to connect them with the right.
00:26:08 Speaker 4
Stakeholders. Partner.
00:26:09 Speaker 4
Nerves etc. Working with UCL and this joint accelerator programme, particularly funded by 8020 thirty, has been a a very, very, I would say, professionally and personally, a satisfying experience and.
00:26:25 Speaker 4
We are able to develop products, but I think if you're able to hand hold many startups, the access to assistive technologies can be accelerated.
00:26:36 Speaker 2
I want to thank both of you today for spending your.
00:26:40 Speaker 2
Precious time with us to talk about such exciting projects. We have had a few years together in the past. Really just building relationships, working together and you've described so eloquently a number of different projects that are already going to be moving into the future to tackle such important, sustainable development.
00:27:01 Speaker 2
That the society needs us to address.
00:27:04 Speaker 2
If we are going to tackle these, we know very clearly we can't do them alone. Sharing knowledge across the world, sharing knowledge with partners who are like minded, have different experiences, different research experience and bringing all of that together will enable us to actually reach a lot further than if we were doing it alone.
00:27:25 Speaker 1
Absolutely exciting time for her then. It's great to see that we're breaking down silos not just across disciplines, but across borders across sectors.
00:27:35 Speaker 1
Thank you so.
00:27:36 Speaker 1
Much for joining us today, Professor Rao.
00:27:38 Speaker 1
Where can listeners find you online?
00:27:40 Speaker 1
Whether it's Twitter or ex.
00:27:42 Speaker 1
Or other social media channels.
00:27:44 Speaker 4
So a lot of our work is actually available on both YouTube and LinkedIn, but we also have a website where some of these technologies can be.
00:27:56 Speaker 1
Thank you so much.
00:27:57 Speaker 4
Thank you. Thank you.
00:28:01 Speaker 2
You've been listening to unlocking the SDG's. This episode was presented by me Professor Monica Lakhanpal.
00:28:08 Speaker 1
And me? Professor Priti peric.
00:28:10 Speaker 2
And produced by the UCL SDG's initiative and edited by Frontier, our guests today were Professor Summit Malhotra and Professor PVM Rao.
00:28:20 Speaker 1
If you'd like to hear more podcasts.
00:28:22 Speaker 1
MCL subscribe to UCL bites wherever you download your.
00:28:27 Speaker 1
Or visit www.ucl.ac.uk/SDG. Join us next time on unlocking the SDG's.