India, Jan. 24 -- Soon after graduating from IIT Kharagpur, Amrita participated in Pune Venture Center's program that allowed young engineers to work closely with doctors and observe healthcare delivery in rural settings. It was here that she encountered a problem that stayed with her. "Diagnostics are very critical to healthcare. If diagnostics don't work well, everything else can go awry. In small towns and villages, access was limited and turnaround times were slow. I kept asking myself why we couldn't build something that narrowed this gap," she says.

Where to begin?

Diagnostics is a very wide canvas, and where exactly could she start?

"I was particularly affected by the condition of neonates who are generally born small, weighing ...