New Delhi: Inauguration of the CNC, Sterilization, and Packaging Lab at IIT Delhi's mPragati, National Medical Device and Diagnostics Innovation Hub, is a great addition to India's Medical Tech Sector. Dr. Rajiv Bahl, Secretary, Department of Health Research, and Director General, ICMR, inaugurated the labs.
This will help manufacture indigenous medical devices and help support India's self-reliant advanced healthcare technologies.
The following were present at the inauguration: Dr. Suchita Markan, Head, Innovation and Translation Research, ICMR; Prof. Rangan Banerjee, Director, IIT Delhi; Prof. Ashwini Agrawal, Dean (R&D); Prof. Manidipa Banerjee, Head, Central Research Facility; and Prof. Dinesh Kalyanasundaram, mPragati Coordinator.
Advanced CNC Facility to Help Indigenous Manufacturing
The new CNC Lab will now be able to manufacture precision medical implants and surgical instruments using Biocompatible certified CNC materials.
With multi-axis machining, Swiss-type turning, and high-speed milling, this facility will be able to manufacture both patient-customized and general medical tools. This lab will fill a very important gap in MedTech that is very dependent on precision parts and components that are imported.
End-to-End Sterilization and Packaging Infrastructure
An advanced Sterilization & Packaging facility has also been established along with a CNC unit to facilitate the entire lifecycle of medical and biomedical products.
The following items comprise this facility:
- Systems for Ethylene Oxide (EtO) sterilization
- Steam autoclaves
- Workstations for precision device assembly
- Automated reagent dispensers
- Stability chambers
- High-precision laser welding and marking
- Vacuum packing, traceability, and batch coding
This laboratory also provides a full suite of biological and molecular testing equipment, including but not limited to thermal cyclers, real-time PCR machines, Trans-Blot systems, gel electrophoresis, HPLC, fluorescence microscopy, biosafety cabinets, CO₂ incubators, ultracentrifuges, and ultra-low-freezers. These resources support molecular diagnostics and biological testing as well as the validation of sterility and the assurance of quality and compliance with relevant regulations.
Strengthening the Indian MedTech Ecosystem
The integrated nature of the facilities is expected to expedite bringing to market home-grown healthcare innovations by narrowing the remaining gap from the research phase to the manufacturing phase at scale.
IIT Delhi mentions that the infrastructure aims to provide researchers, start-up companies, and the industry with the capabilities to design, validate, sterilize, and pack medical technologies to then commercialize them in India. Thus, the infrastructure will reduce the reliance on importing medical technologies and will positively impact the quality of healthcare. The project is in line with the Atmanirbhar Bharat vision and the purpose of ICMR to improve bedside-to-bench research and other priorities of the national health system.
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