A national web-based portal on cleft education and researchers’ platform has been launched at Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), New Delhi by Secretary DHR and DG ICMR Prof. Balram Bhargava recently. The Indicleft tool is the first of its kind in the world that provides facility to the researcher’s data and findings to upload cleft anomaly from any site.

The tool envisages on all aspects of cleft anomaly from the time of conception, birth and till adulthood. The research tool was developed under aegis of a Task Force multispeciality project funded by ICMR in collaboration with Centre for Dental Education and Research, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi.

The project is on multicentre mode. The overall goal of the project is to establish strategies for prevention and treatment of this deformity. As a part of the study, a comprehensive IndiCleft tool has been developed in collaboration with National Informatics Centre (NIC), which has been employed across different participating centres in the country. The Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for recording extra and intra oral photographs, radiographs, dental study model and investigations on hearing and speech defect have been developed in the IndiCleft tool.