Tata Trusts launches Impact Lab for public health

New Delhi: Tata Trusts said it has set up an 'Impact Lab' at IIT Delhi in partnership with health innovation player PATH for healthcare solutions in areas such as maternal and child health, nutrition and diagnostics for chronic and infectious diseases, among others.

The collaboration between the two will mobilize about USD 10 million to run the entire ecosystem.

The 'Impact Lab' will source solutions in chosen areas to improve the healthcare of poor and resource-challenged communities.

"Together Tata Trusts and PATH are building a healthcare Impact Lab which will become a place in the country where innovators can come with their ideas and innovation, test them and build better products and solutions out of those," Tata Trusts Head Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Institutions Manoj Kumar told PTI.

He further said the ideas and innovations will be taken to the market, to public health professionals, government, NGOs and to everybody who has to do with India's public health problems.

"This lab is focussed on incubating innovations and taking them to the community. Research ideas will be converted into actual healthcare solutions, he added.

To start with, the lab will focus on communicable diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, among others as also the major healthcare issues in India.

PATH India Country Director Neeraj Jain said: "We are hoping that over the next couple of years, we will be able to mobilise USD 8-10 million to be able to run this whole ecosystem.

When asked about the need to come up with the idea, Jain said while there are lots of innovations across the country, they are not really able to reach scale specially for products or ideas which are targetted at people living in the low resource area.

"The idea is to really focus on healthcare solutions for India from innovations that are happening within India," he added.