Survey of Anthropometric Data Collection Methods of Indian Population for Design of Proportional Medical Devices

Abstract

India is a developing country with a growing population of 1.155 billion with 668,131 registered medical practitioners. Owing to the large size of the population it is important to capture sufficient yet quality anthropometric data so that it is valid for use to design ergonomic medical devices suitable for the Indian population. In this paper, various databases were searched to compare data quality for Indian population versus others as captured in Caesar, ANSUR etc. A significantly less level of detail in anthropometric data for Indian population was observed although some of the Indian survey methodologies maybe cost effective. Greater levels of details and accuracy were exhibited by both CAESAR and ANSUR databases. This research proposes that the advantages from these two data bases should be combined to develop an efficient methodology for survey of anthropometric data for large populations such as in India.