I am Sanjaya Gunasiri, my invention is a liquid atomizer machine that is researched and developed before the COVID 19 pandemic which however this pandemic gave us the idea to use the same machine as a Sanitizer machine that uses lot less liquid than conventional methodologies. Having developed this as a multipurpose machine with the added advantage of using this as a Sanitizer machine this has evolved in to a truly multipurpose machine.
I like to extend my gratitude to the SLIC team for their assistance (sponsorship) in obtaining a benchmark report from ITI that has given me the opportunity broaden the market for this product.
(A Computer vision-based System to Perform Differential Count of White
Blood Cells)
We are a group of inventors working towards developing a computer vision based system that can be used to replace the expensive hematology analyzers and the inefficient manual counting method to produce WBC differential count reports. Team members are Dr. Nuwan Dayananda, Senior Lecturer, Department of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering, University of Moratuwa, Prof. Indira Silva, Senior Professor, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Science, University of Peradeniya, Iyani N. Kalupahana, Biomedical Engineer, University of Moratuwa, Lokesha R. De Seram, Biomedical Engineer, University of Moratuwa, Dilshan N. Wickramarachchi, Biomedical Engineer, University of Moratuwa and Chinthalanka B. Wijesinghe, Electronic and Telecommunication Engineer, University of Moratuwa.
There are 5 main types of White Blood Cells (WBC) present in the blood and they are Neutrophils, Lymphocytes, Monocytes, Eosinophils, and Basophils. The measure of WBC in the blood is an important indicator of pathological conditions. By determining the differential counts of these WBC, diseases such as microbial infections (virus, bacteria, etc.), leukemia, and other blood related diseases can be diagnosed. In hematology laboratories, manual counting methods and automated analyzer method are used for the differential counting of WBC. The manual counting method is monotonous, laborious and time consuming. Apart from that, static sampling errors and subjective judgment errors also affect the classification accuracy of the manual counting. In automated analyzer methods, the presence of components like nucleated RBC, parasites and platelets lead to misclassifications and affect the WBC count. Furthermore, these devices are expensive and have a higher maintenance cost. Therefore, the CELLBOTIC system is developed to automate the WBC differential count process. CELLBOTIC is a computer vision-based system that can produce WBC differential count reports similar to an expert hematologist. The system consists of a hardware platform that navigates the microscope stage to acquire microscopic images from a blood smear and an algorithm implementation to generate the WBC differential count reports.
We wish to thank the Sri Lanka Inventors Commission (SLIC) for their financial support towards further development of the prototype and guidance in the patent application process. Furthermore, we highly appreciate SLIC’s role in fighting against the COVID-19 virus by supporting technological developments.
Thank you for inviting us to the program,
“Eka Mage Rata” – Inventor-Investor Meetup and giving us the
opportunity to discuss about the future potentials and improvements required to
develop in the invention. We received valuable feedback from the investors
about our invention, “CELLBOTIC – A computer Vision Based System to
Perform the Differential Count of White Blood Cells (WBC)”. Investors
showed us a big picture of the potential market of our invention and they
extended their hands to further develop our invention into a prototype in
agricultural side as well. Moreover, they explained us, how we can help
patients from this invention during COVID-19 pandemic. We could not have done
it without the expert service from Sri Lanka Inventors Commission (SLIC). Your
help has been invaluable, and we cannot imagine how we would have managed it
without your help and support. Again, thank you so much for the great support
and guidance.
We, as a team, would appreciate your continuous assistance, and looking forward to continuing the work together with SLIC.
We at SRQ robotics is a startup initiated at University of Moratuwa. Our team consists of 5 professional engineers and 2 undergraduates. In order to help the government to control the prevailing Covid 19 situation we have implemented a Robot to disinfect public places utilizing Ultraviolet rays. The current method used in SL (Disinfectant Liquids) consumes a considerable time for the process. This time can be reduced by 60% with our robot at a 85% cost reduction in a 100 day run.
With the equipped ultraviolet light tower, the robot can disinfect and kill diseases, viruses, bacteria, and other types of harmful organic microorganisms in the environment by breaking down their DNA-structure. We have conducted laboratory testings and proved a 99.997% disinfection rate. The invention
increases the safety of both staff, patients and their relatives by reducing the risk of contact with bacteria, viruses and other harmful microorganisms. This can effectively prevent and reduce the spread of infectious diseases, viruses and bacteria. The system pays special attention to “infection hotspots”, such as washbasin, patient bed, handles etc.
I’m Ushan Sakuntha an undergraduate following electronics and telecommunication engineering degree from Sri Lanka Technological Campus. I developed this PCR machine which is used to amplifiy cDNA of a virus. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is the method widely used in molecular biology to make millions to billions of copies of a specific DNA sample, allowing scientists to take a very small sample of DNA and amplify it to a large enough amount to study in detail. This is the machine used for PCR process called thermocycler. This is a conventional pcr machine which needs to use a gel run after the pcr process. Now I’m developing this machine into a real time pcr to get the result quickly with the help of MRI and SLIC
We are a team of four members are involving with this ‘Video assisted ward communication system to minimize exposure of doctors to COVID – 19 positive patients’. Dr. Sarasi Kaviratne, Medical officer at National Hospital for Respiratory Diseases, Welisara, Shashika Samarasinghe, Electronic Engineer at Mobitel, Anuruddha Tennakoon, (Electronic Engineer) Founder- A&T Labs and Hirantha Subasinghe,Software Engineer at Huubap PTE are sharing hands to make this project a success.
Our invention is to reduce the exposure of doctors to Covid-19 with proper distanced video assisted communication system. Here we have two ways of communication; Doctor to Patient and Patient to Doctor. Simple architecture of the solution is as below.
For doctor-To observe, prioritize and
communicate with the patient
One
camera for two patients when the beds are within 1m distance and One camera for
one patient when beds are more than 1m apart are installed.
Control
panel at the doctors’ station will get the continuous video feed of the patient.
Camera
has two-way audio where the doctor can initiate the communication through a
control panel (monitor).
At
any time, doctor can observe and prioritize the patientswho need attention
without going physically inside the ward, or without sending a high cost robot
in a single click and even he can ask for complaints from patient after
initiating a call which is autoanswered at the patient’s end.
For patient- To communicate with the
doctor
One
‘panic button’ for each patient will be provided.
When the patient pushes the
panic button, the control panel will get a notification and the doctor can
initiate communication with the patient. Then, the patients make complaints and
communicate with the doctor without waiting for thedoctor’s physical visit with
a single click.
Benefits of this
invention are low cost in
development, single click operation,
Easy set-up, non-requirement of high tech training for users and lesser time
for development.
With the proposal, our team contacted SLIC and they
assisted us by giving advices and financial support for the development of this
project dedicating their valuable time.
Thank you very much SLIC team for your assistance and guidance.
I am Dr. Anupa Herath, currently working at base hospital Warakapola as a consultant anaesthetist. I have been working with SLIC since 2014 where I had excellent guidance, support and facilitation for my medical inventions. This low cost video laryngoscope was designed initially in 2015. It was recommended for clinical use by an expert ethical committee in 2016. Followed by a series of modifications and improvement Patent certificate was issued for the novel features of this device in 2017.
This device is used in anaesthesia in order to facilitate insertion of a special tube called “endotracheal” tube into patient’s trachea in order to provide artificial ventilation. Compared to commercially available devices in this calibre, this device facilitates the procedure with 100% accuracy with minimal damage and risk to the patient. It also makes this procedure easy and safe especially in patients with abnormal anatomy explained in anaesthesia as “difficult airway risk”
The cost for this device is about 10% of the most commercially available device and this can be made using both reusable or disposable material.
The clinical benefit and importance of this device became more and more significant with the COVID 19 outbreak. Use of this device significantly reduces the risk of exposure to the patient and it will protect the anaesthetist and the other health care workers from acquiring infection from an infected patient. With the facilitation and support from the SLIC we are looking forward to distribute this device among all the government hospitals to help the fight against COVID 19 pandemic.
We A. M. Nilupul Nuwan Senevirathna and W. W. Kanchana Aruna Kumara Perera develop this invention. Our hands must be properly sterilized to protect against coronavirus. Also when using sanitizer bottles containing disinfectant liquid, contact with it can cause the spread of the disease. To solve that problem, we have developed an automated sanitizer. It can also be fitted to many existing sanitizer bottles. It is designed to be small in size, at a very low cost. When we close our hands to this Automatic Hand Sanitizer, it automatically senses our hands. This then it sprays sanitizer liquid into our hands. That way we can sterilize our hands well. It has a fluid volume controller and a fluid frequency controller. Once this device is fully charged, we can get sanitizer liquid many times.
