India Health Fund launch TB Quest, Searching for Lab to Last Mile Innovation

The India Health Fund (IHF), seeded by the Tata Trusts, with strategic support from The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria today announced the launch of the TB Quest – a quest for innovations towards eliminating tuberculosis. This is being co-partnered by the Ministries of Health and Family Welfare, Science and Technology, and Centre for Cellular And Molecular Platforms (C-CAMP), an initiative of the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India, The Global Fund, Social Alpha, Stop TB Partnership, and the Tata Trusts. 

The TB Quest is aligned with IHF’s vision to support the adoption and scale-up of innovative products and processes through comprehensive support to innovators including funding, technical mentorship, handholding for lab to market journey, and dialoguing with policy and programme experts for roll-out.  

The Government of India has set a target of eliminating TB by 2025, a vision that demands innovative ideas, bold approaches, and unprecedented investments by stakeholders across the board.  To realise this goal, IHF is committed to bringing together various partners and stakeholders, pooling expertise and resources, fostering innovations and translating these from “lab to last mile”. TB Quest is a result of this vision.

The call for innovations in products, technologies and processes are, specifically, in the following thematic areas: 

 ·         Bring the ‘missing’ TB patients within the purview of care, including notification, through innovations to find new cases and ensure care continuum  

·         Screening and appropriate management for Latent TB Infection (LTBI) among all identified high risk population groups in India 

·         Infection control in settings such as health care facilities, crowded habitations, congregate settings, including workplaces where transmission is high

·         Address gaps in the supply chain of anti-TB drugs and consumables in public and private sectors  

Selected applications stand to receive wide support, including milestone-based funding support for validation, beta prototyping, feasibility studies and product/ process evaluation, as applicable. The awardees will benefit from collective engagement with global stakeholders and access to the global ecosystem working towards TB elimination. They will also have the opportunity of presenting their innovations to RNTCP aiming at integration with the National Strategic Plan for TB Elimination (2017-25)

Applications will be accepted till April 8, 2019. Further details about the TB Quest and the application process are available at www.indiahealthfund.org.