Innovative Products Range from Consumer to Healthcare Unveiled at Philips India Innovation Experience 2016

Philips India has introduced a range of innovations for healthy living, prevention, diagnosis, treatment and homecare at the 4^th edition of the Philips India Innovation Experience in Bengaluru. Products launched include the Children’s Respiration Monitor, the Air Purifier Series 3000 and Air Purifier Series 6000, the Fetal Heart Rate Monitor, the Dream series of sleeping aids, and the e-alert System .Both the Fetal Heart Rate Monitor and the Children’s Respiration Monitor have been developed at Philips Innovation Campus (PIC) in Bengaluru while the e-alert system has been developed at Philips Healthcare Innovation Centre (HIC) in Pune. These products will be manufactured at HIC.

Key products launched: * Air Purifier Series 3000 – for improving indoor air quality in home environments *  Air Purifier Series 6000 – for improving air quality in challenging indoor environments (hospitals, restaurants etc.) *  Children’s Respiration Monitor – for diagnosing pneumonia in children *  Fetal Heart Rate Monitor – for monitoring the health of foetuses *  Dream series – sleeping aids for sleep apnea patients *  e-alert - proactive, sensor-based solution for virtually monitoring the health ofimaging systems

The launch of these products is in line with the strategic direction of Philips which will drive the convergence of professional healthcare and consumer health across the healthcare cycle from healthy living and prevention to diagnosis, treatment, recovery and home care.

The products launched will enable Philips to offer solutions at every stage of the healthcare cycle –the Air Purifiers aid in healthy living by improving the quality of indoor air while the Children’s Respiration Monitor and the Fetal Heart Rate Monitor diagnose pneumonia in children and monitor the wellbeing of the foetus’ heart respectively. The Dream series is an effective sleep therapy for those suffering from obstructive sleep apnea while products for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder enable home care for chronically ill patients, thereby freeing up hospital beds for acute cases. While the Air Purifiers are a global innovation being introduced in India to meet the increasing need for clean air, the other products have been designed and developed at the Philips Innovation Campus in Bengaluru.

“We are today confronted by the challenges of chronic and life-style related diseases which call for a new approach to healthcare. This new approach must cover all aspects of consumer and patient needs – from prevention and treatment to home care – by employing a holistic approach towards care and healthy living” said V. Raja, Vice-Chairman and MD, Philips India.

“We have always been driven by innovation to introduce meaningful solutions that enable access to affordable healthcare. In keeping with our global mission to improve the lives of 3 billion people a year by 2025, the Philips Innovation Campus in Bengaluru remains focused on disruptive innovations to deliver solutions that address some of the outstanding challenges facing us today” said Srinivas Prasad, CEO, Philips Innovation Campus.

With an overall focus on developing local solutions for local and global markets, Philips has been steadily increasing its manufacturing capabilities in India over the years and currently 50% of its Personal Health portfolio is being manufactured in India. The highly successful Air Purifier will also be manufactured in India in the next 2-3 years. Preethi, one of Philips’ brands and among the most respected Kitchen Applicance brands in the country offers a portfolio which is completely manufactured in India. The Philips Healthcare Innovation Centre in Pune currently manufactures interventional and diagnostic imaging solutions for both local and global markets.  As a global MNC with extensive local manufacturing capabilities, Philips remains committed to the government’s vision for Make in India.

Products and solutions unveiled at the event included:

 Dream Series - Philips’ sleep therapy portfolio connects the provider and the patient at the most important points in the health continuum, from diagnosis to compliance and ongoing use and resupply. Philips introduced the new, fully integrated, patient-centric sleep therapy solution featuring a connected positive airway pressure (PAP) therapy device, complementary mask line, and engagement tools to improve care for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) patients. The Dream Family integrated solution includes the DreamStation PAP device andDreamWear mask.

Dream Station Auto CPAP: DreamStation positive airway pressure (PAP) sleep therapy devices are designed to be as comfortable and easy to experience as sleep is intended to be. Connecting patients and care teams, DreamStation devices empower users to embrace their care with confidence, and enable care teams to practice efficient and effective patient management. DreamStation offers exceptional comfort, intelligent monitoring, motivation and feedback, and seamless connectivity to the care team for proven clinical care and effortless patient management. The RespironicsDreamStation Auto CPAP comes in two models with SD card and without SD Card.

DreamWear:  It is an under the nose nasal mask. DreamWear's unique design offers many of the benefits of nasal and pillows masks to allow patients to have the best of both mask types. Allowing more freedom of movement and more comfort than their prescribed mask, DreamWear patients feel like they are not wearing a mask at all.

The top of head connection of the device allows patient the freedom to move. The Under the nose nasal cushion prevents red marks, discomfort or irritation in the nostrils or on the nose bridge. The cushion comes in four sizes Small, medium, large and medium wide. The Fit Pack includes all 4 cushion sizes (S, M, L, MW) and 1 medium sized frame.

Children’s Respiration Monitor

In support of the fight against child mortality as a result of pneumonia, Philips has developed an affordable respiration monitor that automatically and accurately measures the breath rate of a child under the age of 5. The Philips Children’s respiration monitor has been specifically designed for use in low resource areas. Making it power independent and robust so
it withstands and can operate in harsh conditions.
It's clinical decision support functionality provides instant feedback, to support the care provider in determining a correct diagnosis, clearly indicating the risk of fast-breathing rate of the child, based on the WHO IMCI guidelines.

Philips Fetal Heart Rate Monitor

Philips Fetal Heart Rate monitor is a robust, portable, power-independent monitor. It has built-in batteries that provide up to 10hours of use and when no mains supply is available is available, cranking the wind-up handle for 1min provides power up to 10mins of operation. What more, the robust outer casing makes it ideal for usage in remote and rural areas. A built-in loudspeaker helps the operator hear the heart rate while the display screen indicates detectable heartbeat, beats per minute and low battery indication. As a result one can quickly identify any abnormal fetal heart activity and take prompt action.Combined with the Mobile Obstetrics Monitoring (MOM) software, the Fetal Doppler provides rural health workers with a never before reach to extend pregnancy care to women in towns and cities in the hinterland. Light, robust and easy to use, the power independent nature of the device is an enormous advantage for health workers in rural and tier-2 markets.

Philips e-alert System:

The Philips e-alert is a proactive, sensor-based way to enhance uptime. It is an intelligent hardware- or software-based tool that keeps a close virtual eye on your imaging solutions. Using powerful sensor technology, it continuously monitors all key parameters of the client’s MRI systems – and issues an automatic alert if something is amiss. To ensure MRI systems can deliver the quality, efficiency, and uptime needed, critical parameters – such as cooled water supply, helium level and humidity – must be just right. Achieving the ideal balance of these environmental factors is key to optimum system performance. Insight into these metrics and knowing when and how to respond if an issue arises are essential to maintaining uptime, improving efficiency, and reducing maintenance cost and effort. This proactive approach supports the collaboration between the healthcare provider and Philips to respond quickly, helping to identify and eliminate issues before they can impact operations.

Philips Air Purifier Series 3000:

The new Philips Air Purifier Series 3000 is an innovative extension to the existing air purifier portfolio which offers world-class Aerasense technology, respiratory particle feedback, a special allergen mode, new filters, improved airflow and an Aerodynamic design. The Philips Air Purifier Series 3000 provides most accurate real-time PM 2.5 feedbackwhich helps you to monitor and the air quality. A first in the industry, Philips’ Aerasense technology helps detect PM2.5 and common airborne allergens with high accuracy that can be benchmarked with 15K Euro Professional sensor. It also has a special allergen mode, extremely effective in removing most common allergies. The new NanoProtect S3 filters remove 99.97% airborne allergens, have a bigger capacity and offer all round protection from fine particles, harmful gases, odor and must bacteria and viruses. Providing the most accurate real-time indoor air quality count (PM2.5) which helps you control the air quality, Philips India has designed the new Philips Air Purifier 3000 to meet the requirements of today’s pollution riddled lifestyle.

Philips Air Purifier Series 6000:

The latest Philips Air Purifier Series 6000 is a heavy duty air purifier designed for larger spaces. Indoor air pollution is not only a problem for homes, rather it affects any enclosed space. The air condition in most large spaces like offices, restaurants and not to mention places like hospitals where the allergens and microbes are present in abundance, have more inflow of pollutants; hence need a more powerful solution.  The Philips Air Purifier 6000 with its with Vitashield IPS, TwinForce aerodynamics design and cutting edge Aerasense technology with real time numerical feedback, delivers superior purification against pollution and common allergens. Its TwinForce aerodynamics design effectively doubles its capacity to clean air, making it suitable for larger spaces. It also provides cleaner air with up to 8 times less chance of error in indicating air quality level is safe, compared to today's industry commonly used Infrared LED sensor with the Aerasense technology. The upgraded VitaShield technology effectively removes particles as small as 20 Nanometers (more than 100 times smaller than upper limit of PM2.5), including common allergens, bacteria and some viruses. It is a powerful and highly effective solution for commercial spaces that have a high inflow of pathogens and allergens and are most susceptible to damage due to indoor air pollution.

Design Innovative Smart Cities & Win Prize Money of Rs 20 Lakh at KPIT Sparkle 2017

KPIT, a global technology company specializing in product engineering and IT consulting, today launched the third edition of its annual national design and development innovation contest KPITSparkle 2017, in association with College of Engineering, Pune. This contest focuses on creating a culture of innovation and disruptive thinking among engineering and science students. KPIT invites students from across Indian colleges to come up with cutting-edge solutions within the theme, ‘Smart Cities’ and win prizes worth over 20 lakhs.

This year, KPIT Sparkle 2017 invites students to create solutions for Smart Transportation and Smart Infrastructure within the scope of Smart Cities. The solutions should not only be inclined towards advanced technology, but it should aim to be cost efficient and address environmental issues as well. The winning entries should be able to be implemented in real time to make for a cleaner, greener society and improve the quality of living for the end consumer. Finalists will also be invited for job & internship opportunities with KPIT.

Commenting on the contest, Ravi Pandit, Co-founder, Chairman and Group CEO, KPIT said, “The energy of the youth in India will help push the boundaries of innovation to create a more efficient, cleaner and greener world through the use of technology. The Smart Cities initiative by the Indian government is vital to the development of our country and provides many opportunities to create groundbreaking solutions to solve real world challenges. With KPIT Sparkle 2017, we continue to engage the current generation of engineering and science students to enhance their technological acumen and scientific thinking.”

Dr. B.B Ahuja, Director, College of Engineering, Pune said, “It is our pleasure to collaborate with KPIT Sparkle 2017. It is a great platform that provides opportunity to all engineering and science students who are driven to create a sustainable ecosystem. I am pleased to announce that all the winning teams of the contest will get an opportunity from COEP to facilitate their respective startups.”

The last date of registration & Submission of Idea form and documents for the prequalification round is July 15, 2016. For application details and more information, visit http://www.kpit.com/sparkle/register.php. Shortlisted participants will exhibit their ideas at the grand finale. The exhibition will be organized in Pune in early 2017.

Last year’s edition of the contest, KPIT Sparkle 2016, received more than 1,700 innovative ideas on Green Energy, Alternate Fuels & Materials, Autonomous Vehicles and Intelligent Traffic Management from over 10,000 students across 500 colleges in India.

Entrepreneurs are Connecting Things & Changing the Indian Landscape: Satya Nadella

Excepts of Satya Nadella speech during his visit to India in May 2016.

Thank you so much. Thank you Minister for coming as well, it’s great seeing you.

It’s such an immense pleasure for me to be here in India and to see the energy, the creativity of this place. It’s infectious really for me and, obviously I grew up here and I come back here often but every time I come back, I go back energized and it’s phenomenal.

And, so this morning I wanted to share with you, since you are all young entrepreneurs, you are changing the world, you are changing the landscape of India, at least my own perspective. What does it mean to dream big, to create big and have big impact, because that’s what we seek. In my life there have been two passions that have driven at least my dreams and I think back and one of the catalyst – it’s poetry and Computer Science. In fact, I want to relate the two in the context of this big dreams.

Ek dilli ke shayar ne ek zamaney mein kaha tha –

Hazaaron khwahishen aisi ho ke har khwahish pe dam nikle

Bohat niklay mere armaan, lekin phir bhi kam nikle

My interpretation of that Galib’s saying changes every year. I learn something new, there are so many layers and labyrinths in there that every time I sort of, I kind of feel like I’ve learnt it again, that I have figured it out. But my earliest interpretation is the time I was reading Douglas Hofstadter’s book ‘Gödel, Escher, Bach’ and I sort of realized the power of what he was saying, which is, it is not just your dreams being fulfilled, it is your ability to dream things that are worth dying for. And, there is a sort of that incompleteness, in the incompleteness that Godel talks about that Turing took and then created a century of what is computation lies I think the power of what we can do with digital technology. That has to be the source of our inspiration, at least it has been for me as we think about the dreams going forward.

In today’s day, the world that you live in, the world that you are going to shape, the world that you are going to change, that canvas is so rich. When I think about even our own ambitions, when I look at the kind of applications, solutions that you are going to build for all walks for life, for all industries, the level of intelligence that you are going to infuse into that, is pretty stunning. For example now, there is not a single app that you are going to build going forward that’s not going to have computer vision built in and the ability to see things; there is not going to be a single app that you are going to build that does not have the ability to recognize speech. You are going to have apps that recognize natural language and text, and that ability to bring cognition into the application experiences and then augment in fact, human capability is a pretty phenomenal time to be a developer.

Then moving to what we can do by taking the oldest form of communication that we have which is, human language and what if we took the power of human language and were able to translate that into computers. In other words, what if we taught all the computers around us and all the computing, human language. Think about the kinds of applications you could build, but more importantly, think about what it does to democratizing the experience. Instead of us having the cognitive know as users of learning new shell constructs, downloading icon after icons, and screen after screens of apps, what if all you did was spoke or texted and you were able to get the work done. That’s the world I think you can create. In fact, you will build bots that have fundamental understanding of human language - just like how you built websites in the past, just like how you build mobile apps in the past. You are going to build these bot interfaces that understand human dialogue. And, it’s going to be a pretty profound shift in how computing is experienced by everybody. It’s probably going to be the most democratizing force and make it accessible to anybody, who is 80 years old or an 8-year-old.

And I want to just roll a video to just show you what is possible with something like this conversations-as-a-platform, just to kind of give the developers in the audience a feel for the kinds of advances that I think you all will create to change the computing landscape.

To me, this idea of conversations-as-a-platform is a pretty transformative change in computing that I think we’re in the very early stages of. And I can’t wait to see what you all create on top of this platform in terms of changing how people experience computing. And talking about changes in the experience of computing, the other platform, the other innovation that I am just completely blown away by is mixed reality and augmented reality. Because so far in our history, we have created computers that have created these mirror works – where we’ve taken something that we’ve seen in the physical world and created digital metaphors. In fact, the desktop is a great example of that, where obviously it exists in the physical world and we were able to translate that into digital metaphors that a billion users got comfortable with.

But now for the first time in our history, we are able to take what is our field of view and turn that into an infinite display. Just imagine, in what you see, you not only see the analog world but you can in fact, see the digital world along with it. And now let’s extend it even one step further. What if we could add presence? One of the most profound things that’s going to happen as we look out multiple years is people can be anywhere from everywhere. That’s that fundamental notion of presence. So this combination of mixed reality, where you have analog and digital getting mixed, as well as having digital presence where you can be anywhere from everywhere, will I believe fundamentally change computing forever. And this is going to mean - what is architecture is not going to be the same again, what is industrial design is not going to be the same again. 

I mean think about what NASA scientists are able to do now – they’re able to see the Rover move on Mars but the holographic output of the Rover is right there in their office. That means they can walk around and examine the soil on Mars as a holographic output. That transformation I think is what we can all look forward to. But most importantly, that’s what you will shape. It’s the ingenuity, the apps that you build that is going to in fact, change our lives and our work. And it’s that creativity that we want to obviously be able to ignite. And so I want to roll a video to give you a feel of what is happening with HoloLens and augmented reality.

It’s so exciting to see this new media being born right in front of us and I love that phrase which is, when you change the way you see the world, you change the world you see. And I think that’s what all of you are going to do. And the reason I invoke this rich canvas is to really invoke your ambition to how you will shape the world. These three platforms that we are creating – the intelligent cloud platform that gives every application cognition and computational resources so that you can do anything; this idea of reinventing productivity and business process, how you interface with every institution and every process becomes much more natural to a conversation because of the bots you build, because the applications that you build have language understanding; and lastly, the apps that you build, the experiences you build for mixed reality.

We look at this as a platform for you because that’s at the core of our mission – our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. It’s not about celebrating our technologies, it is about really celebrating the technologies that you all in India create. In fact, I want us to be the platform creators that foster the ingenuity of what is happening in India.

In fact, this morning, I had the good fortune of meeting entrepreneurs, student developers, young student developers, who have such high ambition. You met some of them just before I got on the stage. To see what is happening with technology in fashion, what technology is doing for things like Internet of Things, in fact, making it real – the entrepreneur behind iBOT taking Internet of Things and democratizing it, where industrial companies one after the other in India are transforming their products. In fact, the other entrepreneur I met who is building a solution for you to be able to get all your documents starting from your school passing certificate to your mark sheet which I was very scared that I would now go stare back at my mark sheet which I don’t want to ever see again. But the fact that you can get any document is so amazing not because of the fact that you can recall the document but now you can ease the way you do business, the way you apply for your driving license or what have you - the fact that this one entrepreneur is connecting things that were not connected and changing the landscape.

I had the chance to meet a bunch of student developers and it’s fascinating to see their ambitions. They are all participants in this Imagine Cup which I love because I get to see what are students thinking of, what they are imagining. And one of the developers from there has figured out a way to be able to detect, again using computer vision, garbage in our streets and automatically alert the municipal authorities so they can come and pick it up by just taking a simple photograph and using cloud resources and a mobile app to change how garbage collection happens. There was another student developer who is changing publishing – the idea that you can get in fact from textbooks get single chapters and change the unit economics of publishing forever because having grown up here I know exactly how hard it is to get some of the books, especially you know, in the fields like engineering where if you could transform the way people can get to access, it would be fantastic, it would further democratize, I think, learning.

I also had a chance to meet two young developers, one of them is a 17 year old who has figured out how to take data from NASA, conflate it with other information and see the spread of algae in Bay of Bengal. So, this is an app that’s been built so that you could really have the intelligence to drive sustainability, because you know algae grows uncontrolled and all comes a devastating impact. But here’s a student who is taking information that is available, bringing it together – he wanted to have a real impact right here in terms of how we managed our climate. And then I met an eight year old, and this is perhaps the time where I felt the most inadequate. And, the eight year old’s dream was, dream is, to create a society that knows how to balance economic growth with environmental sustainability. 

This is the goal he has and then he translated that vision, that goal, into a novel game that he’s built. And so, he has built a game where, it’s a game where you get to build cities, and in these cities, you can create factories, and yet, depending on the type of power you use in the factory, you get points. And of course, if you are wind powered or solar powered, you get more points. And the idea that this kid has been able to envision what is I think that fine balance that we need in order for us to be able to use new technology, but to use new technology to also create a more equitable society, a more sustainable environment, all around us. That truly is what each one of us is seeking, and what each one of us will have to do. And it is so inspiring for me to come here, to see this broad spectrum of student developers, entrepreneurs, artists and even some big brands, ecommerce companies, who are all changing the landscape of India and thereby, the world, and it really is a privilege for me to be here and it’s a real privilege to be a platform underneath this Indian success. Thank you so very, very much.  

GST Bill Likely to Help Healthcare Manufacturing in India: Raja Venkatraman

By Manu Sharma

If the government of India passes the GST Bill, it would lower tax on production by about 600 basis points from the present about 23 percent, said Raja Venkatraman, Vice Chairman and Managing Director of Philips India Limited.

Addressing the media on the occasion of the Philips India Innovation Experience 2016 in Bengaluru, Venkatraman said, "software industry is a $160 billion industry and this is mainly due to the government incentives that created a good eco system for the software and the allied industries. However, the scene in the healthcare is very different. In fact, no incentives have been provided for the healthcare industry so far." 

If the government wants to see ‘Make in India’ take off, then they needs to provide incentives to promote manufacturing of healthcare products in the country, and not raise customs and import duty, he said.

“By raising duties, one cannot force companies to manufacture in the country. The costs need to come down and need to get the right technology at the cost patients can afford. Infact, it costs more to manufacture in India. That is a huge challenge and increasing duty would not address the problem at all, adds Venkatraman.

“By raising duties, one cannot force companies to manufacture in the country. The costs need to come down and better technology is needed. We need to get the right technology at costs the patient can afford. Infact, it costs more to manufacture in India. That is a huge challenge and increasing duty would not address the problem,“ adds Venkatraman.

While the Pune-based Heathcare Innovation Campus of Philips makes interventional and diagnostic X-ray systems the Philips Innovation Campus in Bengaluru designs software that are put in various products manufactured by the company in the world.