NEW DELHI: Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), along with All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), launched “IndiCleft”, a web-based tool that will identify risk factors and help in online and offline data recording of patients suffering from cleft lip or cleft palate.
Cleft of the lip or the palate is the split or an opening in the lip or the roof of the mouth and is a common birth condition. It can occur alone or as part of a genetic condition or syndrome. Patient suffering from cleft palate has difficulty speaking and feeding.
IndiCleft is a robust, first web and android-based tool and has been developed with the help of National Informatics Centre (NIC).
“There are two elements here, the first element that you are looking at here is the patient information and the second element is module for collecting patient’s data,” ICMR Director-General Dr Balram Bhargava said during the launch on Thursday.
Explaining the working of the tool, experts said that the whole page is designed specifically to capture information for two categories of users – one is for the patients and parents seeking information, and the other is for the professionals “who are willing to get associated with us.”
About 35,000 cleft babies are born every year in India. Speaking on the subject, Dr Bhargava said, “In this era of technological dominance, we should be slightly careful and I think we should start small projects like this.”
He further said that projects like these ensure quality of good treatment, after which “we can solve the whole problem. We need to look at these technologies and start small projects to demonstrate that they are working.”
Speaking about IndiCleft, Dr O.P. Kharbanda, chief of Centre for Dental Education and Research (CDER) at AIIMS, said, “This tool is a comprehensive aid for cleft patients and will cover components broadly grouped under 10 heads – demographic, socio-economic, maternal history, surgical history, dental history, surgical and post-surgical evaluation, ENT evaluation, speech assessment, genetic evaluation and lastly, dental evaluation.”
“In our study, we also evaluated a few risk factors including maternal smoking and alcohol consumption, intake of drugs during the first trimester of pregnancy and exposure to smoke during the same time by the use of ‘chulha’ (hearth) at home or due to passive smoking,” said Dr Kharbanda.
The Rashtriya Bal Swasthya Karyakram has identified cleft lip and palate as one of the visible deformities which are recorded under the government programme.
Speaking about the programme, Deputy Health and Family Commissioner Dr Ajay Khera said, “This tool is also going to identify the risk factors because prevention is better than cure. If we have complete information about 35,000-40,000 cases and if we try to collect their demographic profile and various risk factors one can make out whether the reasons are genetic in nature or whether other factors could be the culprit.”
The multi-centric phase of the study is currently underway in New Delhi, Hyderabad, Lucknow and Guwahati.