Dr Chandrasekhar Nair, Director & CTO of Molbio Diagnostics, was awarded ‘The Infosys Prize 2021’ in the category of Engineering and Computer Science in recognition of the development and large-scale commercialisation of Truenat. The point-of-care testing platform for PCR-based medical diagnostics has been hailed internationally as a breakthrough platform that is a cost-effective, impactful solution in healthcare.

Truenat has enabled testing for millions of COVID-19 cases across resource-limited settings in India and diagnosing multiple infectious diseases like tuberculosis, dengue, malaria and more globally. The point-of-care platform is endorsed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) for tuberculosis detection globally.

Dr Nair has worked with India’s nascent medical device manufacturing ecosystem to eventually set up state-of-the-art facilities to manufacture high-precision plastic test consumables. He spent over a decade primarily translating laboratory technology to scale in fermentation, downstream processing, and natural product chemistry. His interest eventually shifted to in-vitro diagnostics and point-of-care systems.

Dr Nair, said, “It is heartening to receive recognition for contribution; it motivates us to innovate further and provide every patient access to best healthcare through cutting edge technologies.”