Reimagining Diagnostics for a Healthier and More Inclusive Future

In a world where health challenges continue to evolve, the solution isn’t always more of the same—more diagnostic platforms, more devices, or even more data. Instead, the future lies in reimagining what existing healthcare tools can truly accomplish. This is the vision that drives Digvijay Singh , co-founder of Drizzle Health .

Digvijay has leveraged his training from the Johns Hopkins Center for Bioengineering Innovation & Design to innovate in diagnostics for pandemic-prone diseases such as Tuberculosis. Drizzle Health’s flagship product, MagnaSlide, is significantly enhancing TB diagnostics in India, demonstrating how entrepreneurial vision can lead to exponential impact.

Welcome to "GKII Alumni Spotlights," our exclusive series featuring India-affiliated Johns Hopkins alumni, as they share their experiences, reflections, and insights that shaped their journeys at Hopkins and beyond.

In this edition, we feature Digvijay Singh, whose determination to address critical gaps in disease diagnostics led to the creation of MagnaSlide, a low-cost device that improves the accuracy of TB testing without disrupting existing lab infrastructures.

Can you share a bit about your journey from the CBID biomedical engineering program at Johns Hopkins to co-founding Drizzle Health?

Bonolo (my co-founder) and I attended the CBID program at Hopkins, which is a very entrepreneurial place, geared towards real-world solutions. Having worked as a product designer prior to that, it was the perfect opportunity to really understand wicked problems like Tuberculosis (TB) before jumping into tech and market solutions. We were lucky to have Dr Soumyadipta Acharya and Dr Yukari Manabe 's galvanizing support for us to try to create a solution for TB in India and sub-Saharan Africa taking market realities and long term patterns into account. We decided to start Drizzle Health based on the research we conducted at Dr Manabe and Dr Mao's labs, facilitated by CBID. This was a conscious decision to ensure research didn’t stay research and actually changed lives we set out to touch.

Are there any specific courses or experiences at Hopkins that significantly influenced your approach to problem-solving in healthcare?

As a program, CBID forces students to methodically talk to people, including but not only customers. We went to Brazil and South Africa (and India), to gain first-hand understanding of different stakeholder’s viewpoint before we even drew a solution sketch. And we submitted dossiers to regulatory bodies and IP counsel by the end of our coursework. So, thoughtful execution is a big part of the culture.

Apart from that, I think having passionate discussions about problems and solutions with peers and even faculty really helped hone in a positive sum mindset needed to understand the industry to create solutions. That CBID is a place that allows that, in addition to the already world class access to researchers, I think makes it pretty special.

What advice would you give to aspiring or current students at Johns Hopkins who wish to use their education to solve complex global problems? What criteria do you suggest for identifying impactful issues to tackle?

We’ve had a lot of visible and invisible privileges in our journey; I’d say (a) Do not be afraid to jump into global health – there’s a learning curve, but after a while you really do become an expert (b) Market forces, often subsidized by philanthropy, ultimately swing contemporary understanding of solutions in different areas.

So, really spend a lot of time understanding the problem, not just the latest flavour of the problem, including the history of the problem and what has been tried.

To choose projects, I’d posit, among other things, definitely understand your/your team’s strength, including network and resources, and where you can make early progress. Demonstrating momentum is often key, and without being able to convince at least some people, it’ll be hard to find the support you need to take on what might be an impactful but decade-long project.

How is MagnaSlide currently impacting TB diagnostics in India, and what are your plans for expanding its reach?

MagnaSlide, a 50-cent slide having shown PCR level performance for diagnosing TB in even hard to diagnose HIV co-infected patients, is now currently undergoing pilots with the private sector in India. We’re currently scaling up manufacturing, along the regulatory pathway, and setting up quality systems.

We’re also initiating large-scale evidence for public health rollout; India has an extensive 30,000 microscopy center infrastructure that is currently running 50% sensitive tests, while having grown to process 19 million tests yearly (over 70% of all testing). A box of MagnaSlides at these centers will both, be cost effective and almost substantially increase the correct output, curbing transmission of TB in our communities. We’re currently working with international and national agencies to make it accessible across centers.

Could you tell us about other products in your pipeline that you are excited about?

Sure. Through the development of MagnaSlide, a key learning for us from the technology standpoint was the performance difference in being able to handle small and large samples. Most In-vitro Diagnostics (IVDs) are designed for small samples. Think about it. A PCR is $20 per test. But it is also $20 per up to 20ml? What happens when you have liters of samples? Therefore, selective concentration of large samples, such as that through MagnaSlide, is a cross industry wide problem. This is important because it ultimately limits the intervention of diagnostics to treatment, missing out on the opportunity to prevent outbreaks.

Using the MagnaSlide platform, we’ve developed Medupi, which is an AI-enabled reagent-free bacterial detection system. The advantage of this system, outside of the IVD industry context, is that it enables testing of large volume samples such as those from our food and water (and eventually air), to prevent outbreaks such as Typhoid for example, which is another big global health concern. Current IVD systems are just not built for that cost per volume processing. Medupi will enable prevention of outbreaks, which will ultimately result in lower costs, and lowered loss of DALYs downstream.

What emerging trends in healthcare do you believe Hopkins students should pay attention to?

Countries like India have already had widespread internet proliferation that have lowered costs of distribution. With a large young population entering the workforce, and a growing geriatric population in India and worldwide, the cost of both upskilling and skilled talent has lowered, opening opportunities for market sustainable service-based healthcare solutions.

Gupta-Klinsky India Institute is a JHU-wide initiative bringing together the best of the Johns Hopkins community?to address some of the complex India-specific issues through our shared expertise in research, education, policy, and practice.?Our current efforts are rooted in a century-old legacy of rich collaborations between the JHU community and India.

In 2024, we launched a first-of-its-kind effort to consolidate a community of JHU alumni from India, those currently working or based in the country, as well as those who are part of the Indian diaspora. The goal is to mobilize a community of thousands of Johns Hopkins alumni with multidisciplinary backgrounds and a collective vision to deepen the relationship between Johns Hopkins and India.

If you are a Johns Hopkins alum from India, currently based in India, or belong to the Indian diaspora, please take a moment to fill out our short online survey.

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