Week-long workshop: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Frugal Innovation

Prof Prashant Jha, Director of the pioneering Stanford-India Biodesign (SIB) Programme at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi is a life-long frugal innovator and well placed to lead this workshop. He will be sharing his expertise in developing innovative medical technologies using simple, affordable and efficient methods. 

The workshop’s emphasis will be on replicating and nurturing this frugal mindset within attendees and applying it to their own research. This disruptive, agile way of thinking has the potential to save the NHS significant resources, which could then be directed towards patient care instead. 

The week-long workshop will be modelled on the SIB programme’s ‘Discover, Define, Design, Develop’ approach. The SIB programme is world renowned for its phenomenal success in training the next generation of frugal health-tech leaders. It has produced innovations ranging from an affordable fetal monitoring device that aims to reduce stillbirths to a splint made of low-cost cardboard that allows the temporary protection of injured limbs. 


How to attend

More details will be confirmed soon, but please register your attendance now so that you don't miss out on this unique opportunity. The workshop is open to all UCL staff and students interested in cultivating a new, disruptive way of thinking and applying a frugal innovation mindset to their own research and day-to-day work.

Prof Prashant Jha

Prashant Jha is a physician-engineer-inventor-entrepreneur who trained in family medicine, bioengineering, product design, computer science, strategy and innovation management from Prince of Wales Medical College, Royal College of General Practitioners London, IIT Kanpur, AIIMS Delhi, Stanford University and Harvard University.

Over the last decade he has invented medical devices in the areas of stress urinary incontinence, haemorrhoid surgery, labour monitoring, pulmonary medicine and diabetes management.
He is a serial entrepreneur and has set up venture backed businesses in the domains of vaccine delivery, personalised oncology, internet services, education technology and medical devices over last fifteen years.

Currently, Prof. Jha serves as the Fellowship Director of Biodesign School at AIIMS and IIT Delhi. Besides practising general medicine, he trains physicians, designers and engineers in the art and science of inventing medical technologies. He has teaching appointments at several Medical, Engineering and Business Schools in Japan, Australia and Europe – with whom he works to create an ecosystem for developing low-cost, high-impact medical devices for the common person. He also serves as the Senior Editor in South Asia for The BMJ and Founder-Editor for BMJ Innovations, world’s first medical innovations journal. He is driven by mission 1010 - an endeavour to touch 10 million lives through health innovations in next 10 years.