Inaugural recipients of UCL-AIIMS-IITD trilateral seed funds revealed

As part of UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s trade visit to India in October, UCL confirmed the first projects funded under the trilateral call, highlighting new technology collaborations across diagnostics, imaging, surgical interventions and digital health. 

The trilateral partnership, which was launched in November 2024, spans joint research, exchanges, workshops and publications. 

It builds on the three institutions’ shared commitment to affordable, accessible, and ready-to-use innovation. The trilateral model brings clinicians, engineers, and data scientists together from day one, building solutions that can scale for public benefit. 

The first round of funding is split into two streams for one- and two-year projects, covering a range of activities. 

Funded projects and academic leads 

Stream A (one year) 

Early HPV detection for cervical cancer screening — UCL: Dr Vikramjeet Singh; AIIMS: Prof Sandeep Mathur; IITD: Prof Jayanta Bhattacharya 
Cervical cancer is often detected late due to limited access to rapid tests. The team will develop a low cost, fast, and clinically reliable electrochemical sensor to detect high risk HPV-16 and HPV-18 at the point of care. 

Real time hand hygiene monitoring in hospitals — UCL: Dr Susanne Gaube; AIIMS: Dr Priyam Batra; IITD: Dr Shahid Malik 
Manual audits miss much day to day behaviour that drives infection risk. This collaboration will prototype an AI enabled, sensor based system that provides objective monitoring and actionable feedback to improve compliance, especially in resource limited settings. 

AuxoKnee: a next generation knee brace — UCL: Dr Tigmanshu Bhatnagar; AIIMS: Dr Venkatesan S; IITD: Dr Kusum Meena 
Many patients abandon braces due to poor fit and heat. Using auxetic metamaterials, the brace is designed to widen as the knee bends, improving comfort, breathability, and long term adherence for osteoarthritis and post surgical care. 

Portable colposcope for community cervical screening — UCL: Prof Adam Rosenthal; AIIMS: Dr Nilanchali Singh; IITD: Dr Deepak Jain 
Screening programmes lose patients between test and treatment. The team will design and validate a hands free, sterilizable portable colposcope to enable see and treat management in low resource settings, with clinical testing and iterative refinement. 

Stream B (two years) 

Improving fetal monitoring during labour with light and AI — UCL: Prof Subhabrata Mitra; AIIMS: Prof Aparna Sharma; IITD: Prof Sitikantha Roy 
A lack of oxygen reaching the baby during labour can lead to serious harm, yet it is not always easy to spot early. This project will test a small light based sensor worn on the abdomen that tracks how well the placenta is supplying oxygen in real time. Working alongside standard checks, AI will help interpret the signals and flag concerns sooner, so clinicians can make clearer, faster decisions and keep mothers and babies safer.

Digitising outreach dental records for integrated care — UCL: Dr Pratap Kumar; AIIMS: Dr Harsh Priya; IITD: Dr Subodh Sharma 
Paper records from community outreach rarely flow into hospital systems. Building on work in East Africa, the team will use an Affordable, Inclusive and Universal image-based digitisation approach with computer vision and machine learning to extract multilingual handwritten data and link outreach with secondary and tertiary care. 

AI guidance to protect parathyroid glands in thyroid surgery — UCL: Prof Kurinchi Gurusamy; AIIMS: Prof Smriti Panda; IITD: Prof Aurag S Rathore 
Inadvertent removal of parathyroid tissue can cause serious complications. The project will train state of the art image segmentation models on intraoperative photographs to help surgeons identify parathyroid glands reliably in theatre. 

Voices from the collaboration

“A new collaboration with AIIMS and IIT Delhi established through trilateral seed funding will provide direct access to patient samples and clinical validation pathways, significantly strengthening my research impact and ensuring the biosensing platform is robust, reliable and clinically relevant.” 
Dr Vikramjeet Singh, Lecturer in Nanoengineering, UCL Faculty of Engineering 

“This trilateral call funding will further enhance our ongoing collaboration with AIIMS and establish a unique relationship with IIT Delhi to establish our novel optical sensor as a key monitoring tool in clinical practice during labour to improve pregnancy outcomes and reduce hypoxic newborn brain injury.” 
Prof Subhabrata Mitra, Professor of Neonatal Medicine, UCL Faculty of Population Health Sciences  

“I am delighted to be collaborating with the talented team at AIIMS, supporting them in developing a portable device to facilitate affordable community-based cervical cancer screening and prevention in rural areas.” 
Prof Adam Rosenthal, Professor of Gynaecological Cancer Prevention, UCL Faculty of Population Health Sciences 

“This seed funding enables us to combine clinical expertise, engineering innovation and behavioural science to co-develop a low-cost, sensor-based system for real-time hand hygiene monitoring, strengthening infection prevention and patient safety through a truly international collaboration.” 
Dr Susanne Gaube, Lecturer in Human Factors for Healthcare, Global Business School for Health, UCL Faculty of Population Health Sciences

Links

• UCL joins UK Prime Minister India visit and unveils new technology collaborations
• UCL, AIIMS New Delhi and IIT Delhi launch partnership to scale up med tech innovation
• UCL-AIIMS-IITD trilateral call for collaborative research in medical technologies
• UCL and India
• UCL Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Institute for Women’s Health  
• UCL Division of Surgery and Interventional Science  
• UCL Global Business School for Health  
• UCL Computer Science  
• All India Institute of Medical Sciences  
• Indian Institute of Technology Delhi