India, Feb. 26 -- Health experts and researchers in Pune will start a year-long population-based study to estimate the prevalence of needs, met and unmet needs for Assistive technology (AT), and barriers to accessing AT. The study will be conducted from next month under the guidance and support of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), the officials said.

Pune district has been selected as the representative district from Maharashtra. The study, "Assessment of unmet needs and barriers to access assistive technologies among the general population using the Rapid Assistive Technology Assessment (rATA) tool cross-sectional study in India" will be conducted using the World Health Organization (WHO) rATA tool.

Dr Muralidhar Tambe, de...