How Rarly Child Health Immunization is Important in India?

By Dr Nadeera Nilupamali, Co-Founder and Vice President (Product), ImmunifyMe

India, the largest democracy of the world and highly populated country topping the list in terms of population density recorded nearly 67,385 births in 2020 on New Year's Day. Country, home to the highest number of unvaccinated children, has embarked upon an intensified journey to increase the vaccination coverage with mission Indradanush 2.0.

Vaccines play a key role in defending most vulnerable: Children and infants.  However, one in every five children remains un-immunized in the world. And as a result, over 3 million children die every year due to diseases which can be easily prevented by proper vaccination. Routine childhood vaccines are among the most cost-effective life-saving interventions. Thanks to vaccines, countless cases of disease such as polio, measles, diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough), rubella, mumps, tetanus, rotavirus and hepatitis etc have been prevented and saved millions of lives.

According to recent data released by the Indian National Statistical Office (NSO) 97% of the children aged between 0-5 years in the rural setting receive at least one vaccine, but, when it comes to those children being fully immunized, the percentage drops to 58%. Urban setting is not better in any way, 98% of the children receive at least one vaccine but only 60% of the children aged between 0-5 years are fully immunized. Many people working in public health have admitted that even this figure seems to be inflated and the situation could be worse on the ground and a large percentage of children dropping out of immunization programs.

Especially in India in recent times, routine vaccination has been intensified with additional efforts to optimize community coverage. Government has started putting extra efforts with the Mission Indradhanush programme which was launched in December 2014, aiming  to ensure 90% of infants would be vaccinated by the year 2020. Furthermore, under Intensified Mission Indradhanush 2.0, which is the second phase of the initiative launched on October 31, 2019, with a plan to cover 271 districts across India where fewer than 70% infants are currently vaccinated.

The success of Government Intervention

Despite the government spending billions of dollars in programs like Mission Indra Dhanush, the country's immunization rate remains one of the lowest in the world. Immunization amongst children here in India is a big challenge and there many factors to it

Access to vaccines

Religious beliefs

Inter-state, Inter-City Migration

Anti-Vaccine mentality and in some cases

Not being aware about the vaccination process at all

Misplaced priorities in parent front

Parents busy lifestyle and forgetfulness

Proper monitoring of vaccination

Management of vaccine coverage data

Real time monitoring of vaccination and lack of digital interventions

Why does immunisation make financial sense for the country?

Healthcare for young children eventually determines the country's  economic productivity , because vaccine-preventable diseases are known to cause stunting in childhood, which can lead to poor growth, poor adult health, and diminished learning capacity of the children. Prevention always costs less than treatment . For an example if a child ends up with any disability from the illness  like paralysis from polio which could have easily prevented by a vaccine, or neurologic problems from encephalitis caused by measles  etc will result in huge costs for the  treatments and also for providing special school services and other requirement for that particular child.

Morbidity, mortality, and the economic cost of treatment for vaccine preventable diseases are undoubtedly  going to add a huge burden to a country's economy.

If we do a benefit-cost analysis of vaccines there's  no doubt a full range of benefits as measured by gains in economic productivity compared to catastrophic medical expenses which can occur due to our simple ignorance of not vaccinating the children.

Microsoft and Accenture Collaborate on Startup Challenge to Accelerate Innovation in Ecosystem

Microsoft’s 100X100X100 program is collaborating with Accenture (NYSE: ACN) to host the third edition of the Accenture Ventures Challenge for startups in India. To be held on August 11 in a virtual format, this year’s edition of the annual challenge will recognize startups in India across four categories: supply chain resilience, channel shift to digital commerce, systems resilience and responsible technology.

Launched in 2018, the Accenture Ventures Challenge is an annual event run by the Accenture Ventures Open Innovation program in India to identify the best B2B tech startups to develop solutions for real world challenges faced by businesses. This collaboration is the first corporate access partnership for Microsoft‘s 100X100X100 program in India.

Accenture Ventures Challenge 2020 will identify 12 innovative startups that are helping to address the business and human impact of COVID-19, driving innovation in the ’never normal’ era. The winner in each category will be given an opportunity to join the Accenture Ventures Open Innovation partner program and co-create solutions for Accenture clients around the world. Winners will also get access to benefits from the Microsoft ScaleUp program, which supports Seed or Series A B2B startups to scale and co-sell with Microsoft sales teams.

Lathika Pai, country head, Microsoft for Startups, MENA & SAARC, said, “The collaboration between Microsoft’s 100X100X100 and the Accenture Ventures Challenge event reflects our commitment to boost the entrepreneurial energy of startups and build scale with the enterprise opportunities. This initiative will truly help startups evolve from being market-ready to enterprise-ready with the best resources and support from both Microsoft and Accenture.”

Avnish Sabharwal, managing director for Accenture Ventures and Open Innovation in India, added, “Collaboration across the ecosystem is crucial for driving innovation, and we are thrilled to bring Microsoft on board for this year’s Accenture Ventures Challenge. The ongoing business disruption requires an urgent response, and we are confident that we’ll discover innovative new solutions from deep tech startups to help solve some of the most pressing business and human challenges being faced by organizations in India and across the globe.”

Microsoft’s 100X100X100 program was launched earlier this year in India, with an objective of bringing together 100 committed companies and 100 early and growth startups with enterprise-ready SaaS solutions. The participating companies also commit $100K over a period of 18-24 months on solutions provided by the startups.

69% of Indian Consumers Believe their Data is Valuable to Businesses Says Experian 2020 Global Identity & Fraud Report

Report

* Globally, two thirds of consumers said security is still the most important factor when deciding to engage a business, followed closely by ease of access to their accounts

* Fraud poses significant challenge for businesses worldwide, with 57% of businesses seeing rising year-on-year fraud losses linked to account opening and account takeover fraud

Experian, one of the leading credit bureaus and data analytics and decisioning companies today released the Experian 2020 Global Identity & Fraud Report. One of the key findings is that consumers seem to have a heightened awareness about the value of their information with about 69% of Indian consumers saying they like the changes being made to the customer experience as a result of their data being used.

Another significant finding is that the key factors to meaningful online customer engagement are identifying and recognizing consumers periodically. While Indian businesses ranked the highest at 100% in being confident in their ability to identify customers, 35% customers felt unrecognised by businesses. Additionally, about 54% of businesses in India currently use advanced analytics (a hybrid of supervised/unsupervised machine learning + business rules) for identity authentication and fraud prevention. More sophisticated authentication strategies and advanced fraud detection tools will allow businesses to accurately identify and continually re-recognise their customers, reducing their exposure to risk and ultimately leading to increased trust in such organisations.

“Experian’s 2020 Global Identity and Fraud Report shows that while the challenge of identity is a large part of every customer decision, the desire for a better experience, and concerns around security still form the core of the digital relationship between customers and businesses. Businesses today need to deliver more than personalised products and offers; they also need to deliver on customer expectations for security and convenience at every step of the digital journey,” said Sathya Kalyanasundaram, Country Head and Managing Director, Experian India.

Globally, while 95% of businesses are confident in their ability to identify customers digitally, more than half of consumers across the globe do not feel recognised when engaging with businesses online. Over half of the businesses surveyed are prioritising the creation of targeted products and offers while collecting more personal information to do so. Additionally, 84% of businesses believe if they can better identify customers, then they will more easily spot the fraud.

Over 90% of businesses feel these new identity propositions play an important role in re-recognising their customers but no one approach has broadly taken hold yet. Many businesses are familiar with their emergence and are in ‘wait and watch’ mode as the technology evolves and consumer interest grows. Regardless of which identity proposition is adopted by a business, the need to establish the verifiable claims that constitute a person’s identity is fundamental to doing business digitally.

Experian interviewed 6,500 consumers and more than 650 businesses from across 13 countries including India, Mainland China, Japan, Indonesia, Australia, United States, United Kingdom, Germany/Austria, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Brazil, and Columbia. Experian’s 2020 Global Identity and Fraud Report explores inconsistencies between businesses’ views of their ability to meet their customers’ needs and customer experiences with those businesses.

Additional findings from Experian’s 2020 Global Identity and Fraud Report include:

57% businesses are seeing higher losses associated with account opening and account takeover fraud, in the past 12 months.

Over half the businesses are prioritising the creation of targeted products and offers.

66% of consumers understand the value of their personal information to businesses.

88% of consumers want more control over the use of their data.

Experian’s 2020 Global Identity and Fraud Report also shows how different regions across the globe view and manage fraud:

In Brazil, 93% of consumers want more sophisticated security in the form of facial recognition, compared to 63% in China.

While 95% of businesses globally claim to have high confidence in their ability to identify and re-recognise their customers at every interaction, the lowest confidence is in the Netherlands with 82%.

Consumers in the U.S. value their data the most, with 74% of consumers seeing value to them personally. Colombian consumers were the lowest with 5% of consumers.

Globally, 88% of consumers like the changes being made to the customer experience as a result of their data being used. Consumers in APAC top the list at 89% and Europe (including UK) follows closely behind at 82%.

Experian’s identity and fraud business comprises of nearly 300 fraud experts around the world working to protect people’s identities and fight fraud for businesses across multiple sectors, including financial services, telecommunications, retail/e-commerce, insurance, government, and healthcare.

Amazon.com finds competitor in Google in e-books

Seeking to find common ground with authors, who have complained about copyright violations through search services, Google plans
later this year to begin distributing and selling e-books on behalf of its publishing partners.

"We've consistently maintained that we're committed to helping our partners find more ways to make their books accessible and available for purchase," Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker said confirming the move first reported by the New York Times.

"By end of this year, we hope to give publisher partners an additional way to sell their books by allowing users to purchase access to partner programme books online," he said in an e-mail to InformationWeek, a leading source for information technology news.

"We want to build and support a digital book ecosystem to allow our partner publishers to make their books available for purchase from any Web-enabled device."

Google is anxious to find common ground with authors, who have complained about copyright violations in the past through services like Google Book Search.

Formerly known as Google Print, Google Book Search was introduced in 2004 and targeted by publishers and their lawyers the following year for digitising books without the permission of copyright holders.

A proposed settlement of that lawsuit is currently being reviewed by the courts and the US Department of Justice.

Google's e-book sales service will be made available to participants in the Google Book Service Partner Programme, a marketing programme for promoting books through Google Book Search.

If Google succeeds in making peace with authors and publishers, it may find itself competing more directly against Amazon.com, the publication said.

Amazon gave up competing against Google Search in 2006 when it closed its A9 search engine, but Amazon Web Services, the company's on-demand computing infrastructure service, remains a strong contender against Google App Engine.

With its Kindle e-book reading devices, Amazon has been building the infrastructure and market for electronic texts on portable devices, a transition in reading technology that's been anticipated for a decade, but never fully realised.

Apple too will soon release its iPhone 3.0 operating system, which will bring e-book sales opportunities to the iPhone's many e-book reading apps, InformationWeek said.

Apple is rumoured to be working on tablet computing device, a form factor ideal for reading e-books. Other players, like Sony, see a future in e-books, too.

Agencies