Nitesh Jangir Wins Achiever Award from NISAU
Nitesh Jangir — who came to the University of Oxford as a Chevening Fellow, hosted at St Cross College — has been recognised as an “Outstanding Achiever” in Education, Science and Innovation by the India UK Achievers Honours.
The Honours, organised by National Indian Students and Alumni Union (NISAU) UK and the British Council, recognise “some of the brightest young minds in the India-UK corridor.”
I feel humbled. The award brings validation, especially when I look at the over-achieving jury of this prestigious award.
Jangir is a co-founder and director of InnAccel, a medical device company that seeks to “enable access to quality healthcare for everyone.” Its interdisciplinary team of designers, public health experts, engineers and business specialists are using technology as a tool to work toward that vision.
Jangir became aware of the importance of good medical care from an early age. “I come from a remote village in the state Rajasthan, India. People from the village travel 120 kilometres to access care,” he says. “It led to many people losing their lives or living with morbidities.”
After he completed his schooling at his local public school, Jangir enrolled in an engineering college. Meanwhile, he maintained a keen interest in medicine. His education at the college enabled him to understand engineering and physiology through the lens of physics — and ultimately it led to him getting into the medical technology field via the “Stanford-India Biodesign” programme, which is a launch pad for health tech innovation.
Following the programme, he spent three months in the emergency room of a referral hospital — alongside a designer, a doctor and a business specialist — to gain first-hand knowledge of the problems that caregivers face. He and his peers identified 120 needs; they decided to focus their time, energy and resources on preventing ventilator-associated pneumonia in intubated patients and enabling access to essential non-invasive breathing support to premature babies in ‘low-resource’ settings.
To get a greater understanding of the kind of practices that would be needed to work towards those goals, Jangir came to the University of Oxford in 2022 to receive training in innovation management, fundraising, people management and business planning.
As well as being able to skills needed to grow an organisation on global scale under the guidance of program director and St Cross fellow Richard Briant and Dr John Hoffmire, Jangir is also grateful for the way the College has expanded his network and enriched his learning experience.
“The vibrant and diverse environment at St Cross has so much to offer. I have learnt a lot about people and culture by staying in the library, in the common room or having a meal. The immense experience, knowledge and diversity gave me a better perspective on everything I do,” Jangir says.
“The inclusive nature, empathy and diversity at St Cross just not influenced my work but my everyday life. Learning from the fellows of the college as well as students specialising in public health, education, engineering and medicine, has made research more suitable for a wider population.”
To date, Jangir’s innovations at InnAccel include a portable CPAP device called Saans that’s designed to provide short term breathing support for infants suffering from respiratory distress syndrome and VapCare, which is an automated, intelligent secretion management and oral hygiene system for ventilated patients. Together, they have helped caregivers to save more than 30,000 lives in low resource settings.
