Philips Healthcare Honored by Frost & Sullivan

Philips Healthcare has received the prestigious Frost & Sullivan 2013 India Healthcare Excellence Award for the Imaging Company of the year 2013.  Krishna Kumar, President, Philips Healthcare India was presented the award at a ceremony held in Mumbai today.

The coveted Frost & Sullivan India Healthcare Excellence Awards are presented to companies that demonstrate best practices in the Indian Healthcare and Life sciences industry. The awards program follows a rigorous methodology to recognize superior planning and execution of product launches, strategic alliances, distribution strategies, technological innovations, customer services, healthcare delivery services, and mergers and acquisitions. A host of other crucial factors such as leadership, strategy, growth, service, innovation, integration, marketing, financial performance, and development are also considered as part of the award methodology.

Jayant Singh, Associate Director, Pharma and Medical Technology, Healthcare Practice, Frost & Sullivan said "Focus on innovation, quality, and reliability makes Philips the most trusted and a dependable partner of choice for its customers. Unique financing schemes, a comprehensive range of solutions, focus on training, after sales backed by an excellent customer support network reinforced the perception of the company in the eyes of the customer”.

Accepting the award, Krishna Kumar said “The Frost & Sullivan award for Imaging Company of the year is indeed a great honour and it recognizes our efforts towards providing the best in healthcare in India. This recognition inspires us to remain committed to our incremental efforts towards innovation in healthcare technology.”

Philips is currently the market leader in healthcare and is present across 5 categories – Radiology, Cardiology, Oncology, Respiratory Care and Critical Care. Together with its R&D hub, called the Philips Innovation Centre based in Bangalore, the company has been at the forefront of innovation in healthcare, with more than 33 new innovative products being launched recently.  

A New Light Lounge In Bangalore

Philips Lighting India, the country’s leading provider of lighting solutions, unveiled its latest offering, the fourth ‘Philips Light Lounge’ spread across the area of 2000 sqft at Jayanagar in Bangalore. Philips Light Lounge is an experience zone which gives customers a ‘see, touch and feel’ experience of a diverse range of world-class home decorative lighting concepts from Philips like MyLiving, Essential, Lumiware accessories and desk lights in addition to the newly launched chic & stylish LED range for the upcoming festival season. Philips is buoyant about its plans to consolidate its retail presence in Karnataka and South India by opening more Light Lounges and Light Shoppes (Shop-in-shops) by the end of this year.

Speaking on the inauguration, Rahul Taneja – Business Head, Consumer Luminaires, Philips Lighting India said “In line with the continued company-wide focus on consumer lighting, Philips has rapidly increased its retail presence across important cities in India in the last two-three years. We are ecstatic about launching our fourth light lounge launch in Bangalore as we see a huge demand for the home lighting products. The Light Lounge in Bangalore will offer consumers the complete range of Home Decorative Lighting solutions under one roof.”

With the launch of the newest Philips Light Lounge in Bangalore, the company now has 87 Light Lounges in India, in addition to 1050 Light Shoppes in the country. A home is a reflection of one’s personality, tastes and preferences and lighting can make a huge difference to the look and feel of the house. The Philips Home Decorative Lighting range is a unique offering in the market to cater to the evolving lifestyle needs of global Indians. The market for decorative lighting is currently inundated with unbranded cheap imports that do not always satisfy energy efficiency and safety norms. Philips differentiates its offerings through innovation in design, energy efficiency and application of its global lighting application expertise. The product range starts from a price of Rs 575 and extends up to Rs 60,000.

Each Philips Light Lounge will showcase lighting solutions for every application and space within a home, including the living room, bedroom, study, dining rooms, kitchen and bathroom. At the Philips Light Lounge, consumers will receive expert advice in choosing the right lighting design solutions to meet their unique requirements. The new Philips Light Lounge is located at Priority Concepts, 9th Block, Jayanagar, Bangalore.

Handy First Aid AED From Philips

WORLD HEART DAY 2013  

In an initiative to spread awareness on managing Sudden Cardiac Arrests (SCA) and thereby saving lives, a detailed demonstration of the Automated External Defibrillator was organized at the Philips Innovation Campus.The initiative was part of “World Heart Day” that is being celebrated on September 29.

A portable device, AEDs can be used to provide defibrillation to save the life of a person who has suffered from a Sudden Cardiac Arrest. As AEDs come with audio and visual instructions, they can be used by anyone to save a life with the push of a button.The AED analyses the heart rhythm of an individual and on detecting an abnormal rhythm, charges and instructs the user to push the shock button. They are completely safe and there is no risk of injury from an electrical shock.

To demonstrate the usage of  AEDs Philips invited Dr. Mabel Vasanaik, Consultant and Head – Adult Emergency Department, Manipal Hospitals to its campus in Manyata Tech Park. Dr Vasanaik addressed the attendees on Sudden Cardiac Arrests and the role of an AED in managing them before actually demonstrating the usage of an AED. Following the demonstration, Dr Vasanaik addressed queries from the attendees on AEDs, why they are critical and how they should be used to save lives.

“There have been many  instances of deaths due to Sudden Cardiac Arrests (SCA) in Bangalore city and across the nation in the past year alone.Our ambition is to educate civilians on a simple procedure that would help you save another person’s life. Using an AED within the first three to five minutes of a collapse can literally be the difference between life and death for someone experiencing sudden cardiac arrest. With this initiative we would like to encourage government bodies and institutions to have the AED machines placed just like fire safety devices or first-aid kits” said Mr. Srikanth Muthya, Director, Patient Care & Clinical Informatics, Philips Healthcare, India.

Recent cases of deaths by SCA in Bangalore city,  such as that of 24 year old actor Hemanth or the 27 year old footballer Vankatesh  is a clear  indication that the youth is increasingly susceptible to this medical condition.  Various factors such as  family history of coronary artery disease, smoking, high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, obesity, diabetes, a sedentary lifestyle etc are the primary causes for SCA.

On the occasion of “World Heart Day” on September 29, 2013, it is time to introspect on taking it upon ourselves to building awareness  of being part of a greater community that helps in saving lives.

The Automated External defibrillator (AED) by PIC is a portable electronic device that automatically diagnoses the potentially life threatening cardiac arrhythmias of ventricular fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia in a patient, and is able to treat them through defibrillation, the application of electrical therapy which stops the arrhythmia, allowing the heart to reestablish an effective rhythm.

With simple audio and visual commands, AEDs are designed to be simple to use for the layman, and the use of AEDs is taught in many first aid, first responder, and basic life support (BLS) level cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) classes.

Innovation For Young Entrepreneurs At SAP Techniversity

SAP hosted the second edition of its youth focused event – SAP Techniversity at KTPO in Whitefield, Bangalore on September 28, 2013. The day-long event witnessed about 5624 students from 348 colleges across India to learn about the latest trends in technology and unwind though a variety of cultural performances.

The technology focused sessions covered a broad range of topics such as ‘The power of SAP HANA’; ‘Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) and their impact on higher education’; ‘Megatrends shaping the world’; and ‘The future of mobility and cloud computing’. Besides this, students heard from speakers such as M N Vidyashankar, Principal Secretary Commerce and Industries Department, Government of Karnataka; Ravi Venkatesan, former Chairman of Microsoft India; eminent theatre personality, Boman Irani; India’s youngest CEOs, Shravan and Sanjay Kumaran; among others.

“It is important for organizations today to play an active role in developing more readily employable talent. Through the engagements that SAP undertakes, students from across Karnataka are exposed to and educated on the latest trends and technologies that shape the IT industry in our State,” said M N Vidyashankar, Principal Secretary Commerce and Industries Department, Government of Karnataka.

Additionally, SAP unveiled the Student Start-ups on SAP HANA program, aimed to foster a culture of innovation among engineering students. Through the program, SAP educates students on SAP HANA and supporting technologies, and mentors them through the prototype and development phase of their projects. This is in addition to SAP University Alliances (UA) which has already educated over 147,000 students from over 90 schools in India on SAP HANA. 

SAP University Alliances runs several interesting contests for students such as App Rumble India 2013, Global Connected Car Contest 2013, Utility of Tomorrow Innovation Contest and The Ultimate Data Geek Challenge. The App Rumble India 2013 contest was launched in July and received registrations from over 3000 students. In the DemoJam at SAP Techniversity, the final top five teams of this contest will showcase their prototypes to the student audience.

“Education is the key to innovation and social development,” said Ann Rosenberg, Global Head, SAP University Alliances, SAP AG. “SAP University Alliances helps to educate the talent of the future by empowering students to better prepare for a successful career path within the vibrant SAP ecosystem, be it at one of our customers or partners or at SAP itself. In addition, we are responsible for building and driving the Channel for Innovation from the Universities to the SAP Ecosystem and build the new SAP Ecosystem – the talent of the future. We are passionate about early talent and their potential to contribute and extend the SAP innovation story. Students who get to know us better see SAP as cool a company as Google, Facebook, or Apple”.

SAP University Alliances aims to build ‘The Future of Business Driven by SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud’ in which top universities, customers, partners together with SAP share innovations that form the future of business. With that goal in mind, a venture that SAP University Alliances and SAP Labs drive is SAP Osmosis which enables participating students to understand the latest technologies such as SAP HANA, mobility, Cloud, Big Data through knowledge sessions. In the recent past, SAP Osmosis has engaged with students from Tumkur University and National Institute of Engineering, Mysore.

“SAP Labs India believes that through more interaction between the industry and academia, the skill gap that exists can be significantly reduced. Through initiatives such as SAP Techniversity, Student Start-ups on SAP HANA program, SAP Osmosis and others, we want to expose students and academic bodies to the latest trends the industry so that students can better prepare themselves for the corporate world,” said Anirban Dey, Managing Director, SAP Labs India.

Photo caption:(L-R) Anirban Dey, Ann Rosenberg & MN Vidyashankar

EPR Drives NGO To Greater Heights

CASE STUDY – AKSHAYA PATRA 2012-13

By Manu Sharma

Company Profile

The world has enough food for everyone, but millions of children still face hunger and malnutrition in India. Akshaya Patra Foundation, a NGO providing hot, nutritious freshly cooked classroom lunches for underprivileged children in India runs the world’s largest midday meal programme. The journey began in Bangalore in 2000, by feeding 1500 children in schools and today has grown into a huge organization providing lunch for nearly 1.3 million (per the school enrollment data) underprivileged children in eight states from 18 kitchens. The NGO plans to reach 5 million such children by 2020 expand through out India.

PROBLEM DEFINITION

Due to lack of information and control the need for Information Technology (IT) within the organization was first felt as early as in 2006-07. During the same period  Akshaya Patra that had only 5-6 centres cum kitchens grew by adding 10-14 new centres over the years at the rate of 3-4 new centres each year.
Initially the NGO had only accounts and financial reporting that were centralized and done out of the head office in Bangalore. It made use of Tally software for accounting until March 2011. “However, we felt there was no real-time availability of data and had no standardized way of recording data either. And besides there was no common platform for distribution, collaboration, and sharing of information was bare minimum and employees were working in silos. Since the information was not accurate so a sense of discomfort was felt by the high reps at the head office,“ said Shridhar Venkat, Executive Director, Akshaya Patra.

THE SOLUTION

The IT wave within the organization happened in 2009-10, when Akshaya Patra started to look and shop for adequate software. A major beak-through happened when they implemented the Microsoft Dynamics AX2009 (ERP)among other equipments. In fact, Microsoft Dynamics AX is the complete ERP solution for enterprises that provides a purpose-built foundation across the organization, along with comprehensive, core ERP functionality for financial, human resources and operations management. 
The NGO has positioned the ERP project in three phases. In the Phase I, they stated off with finance, purchase and stores which is up and live from April 1, 2011. While Phase II will cover payroll, production, distribution, maintenance and quality that will be completed and up by June, 2012. The final Phase III will cover HR, projects, CRM, business intelligence (BI) etc that will be completed and up by April 2013. The ERP is being implemented by Microsoft Dynamics Gold partner Affordable Business Solutions, Bangalore.

In fact, the ERP has today 230 users across 19 centres and expected to grow to 1000 by 2012-13 with new modules says, Vinay Kumar, Head ERP, Akshaya Patra Foundation.

Since 2011, Reliance Communications via MPLS lines has linked all the centres through a private Wide Area Networks (WANs). “Reliance is our preferred service provider for data, Internet, leased line and voice (mobile). Almost all the centres are today linked and up running. Even our ERP runs on this network,” says Harsha E, former IT Manager, Akshaya Patra Foundation. 

IMPLEMENTATION LEARNINGS

With the end of Phase 1 of ERP, the NGO has noticed reduction the errors in various systems by about 25% today despite being utilized in three separate phases. But it is a move towards a standardized operating environment looking at the same data. 

Despite being in the initial stage, the NGO was able to develop a lot of user and training manuals in-house to help read and understand EPR and other technologies better.
Besides no repository of the report required for each function to perform smoothly that was discovered during the implementation stage. It has only settled down now on the  reports. In fact, the first six months was a big struggle, signs Kumar.

OPERATIONAL BENEFITS

Some of the business benefits with the ERP running in phase II stage has helped to standardize on procedures like accounting, finance etc. It has also helped in  consolidation was one of the biggest challenges. Also since everyone connects at the same time so able to get real-time data benefits unlike earlier besides it has cut down on travel and also on communication costs.
“The best thing that has happened by installation of ERP is everyone from our top management, auditors (KPMG)and our CFO are all happy since every thing done is more timely and accurately. All counts on the ERP database now,” remarks Kumar.
Since every one talks about 'Green' today, we were able to get system-based approval rather than the earlier manual-based approach. So though this green approach helped in reduction of paper and time, says Kumar.

CONCLUSION & FUTURE TRENDS

Akshaya Patra with the full implementation of the ERP platform will be able to get 100% of benefits in terms of data availability, accuracy and transparency.
As the NGO has no plans to increase the strength of the IT staff, it has plans to move entirely to the cloud and mobile  platforms in the coming years.
They also have plans of opting for central procurement using a e-platform to help do a lot of research on the season to buy, location, state etc. Also on the cost of operations/spending and so dependent on ERP Analytics coming up for procurement. “So it would be complete database decisions by 2013 by integrating exchange server with ERP on real-time basis. We also would be going in for trading on the commodity exchange – MCX, NCDEX through Food Corporation Of India on items like oils, dal, rice, wheat, sugar, jaggery and spices etc,” remarks Vinay.  “Akshaya Patra as an NGO is a pioneer in the use of IT in the real sense for maximum impact. It is definitely a pointer to how other NGOs can do the same to maximize operations and exploit the potential of IT to better their programmes. Akshaya Patra can be looked at as a best practice NGO for the use of IT.” concludes Mohandas Pai, Trustee, The Akshaya Patra Foundation.

Toshiba Branches From LCD TVs to GaN-on-Si Lighting LEDs

They’re an electronics brand that you’re familiar with for countless reasons, but just what are Toshiba working on now? From LCD TVs that still pack a decent punch to GaN-on-Si lighting LEDS, this is one manufacturer who has their finger firmly on the digital pulse.

According to a report, the firm’s LEDs are already available – showing the world just what cost-reducing technology can achieve. Toshiba has claimed that their intended use is for general lighting applications within ceiling lights and normal bulbs as well as in the public sphere for street lights and floodlighting.

For those who haven’t heard of GaN-on-Si lighting, the big news is that these are made in a way which is considerably cheaper than the standard format. The emissive GaN layers are made on large silicon wafers – much cheaper than the SiC or sapphire wires used previously and only available in smaller sizes.

These developments are therefore just another example of the brand proving their worth in a market that is continually evolving, but their dedication to improve services and cut costs doesn’t end there.

Toshiba have also been continuing their development of LCD TVs, focusing no high-end models which will pack a sizeable punch in the battle for TV supremacy.

According to a report they will be restructuring the spending associated with their TV and PC businesses, planning to put the majority of their time and effort into premiums, high-end LCDs and adjust their focus to B2B businesses. 

For consumers, there’ll still be plenty of variety when it comes to the devices and units which are available for them but you can guarantee the introduction of a large number of high-end devices too. 

LCD TVs remain one of the major forms of display unit for consumers and corporations, rivalled only by LED units which tend to appeal more to the budget-conscious audience. Boasting exceptional contrasts when it comes to picture quality and with the ability to be integrated within slimline designs, LCD TVs have all the perks the modern user wants from their home entertainment viewer. 

Toshiba’s focus on the higher end of this scale will ensure that devices continue to meet the growing needs of consumers which not only call for high quality pictures and stunning displays but also interconnected media and the ability to connect to the internet.

The rise of the so-called Smart TV is something which you cannot have missed and has in many ways overshadowed the simultaneous rise of 3D TV sets. Integration of the two ideas may seem inevitable but whatever the outcome they’ll need a unit in which to sit. For many, this is the LCD TV which continues to be a market leader across various realms. Capable of handling HD broadcasted content, the possibilities really are endless for this unit and Toshiba are sure to drive this growth even further. 

Source: Toshiba

Philips Efficia to Help Reduce Infant Mortality in India

The Bangalore-based Philips Innovation Campus (PIC) in its quest to provide innovative and affordable healthcare solutions for India, has launched an innovative and advanced suite of mother and child care solutions during the Annual Media Onsite, 2013 recently in Bangalore. This suite of products focused across the continuum of care is affordable and caters to a diverse set of care areas.

“India loses over three lakh babies every year. Many of these are premature and low birth weight infants who are exposed to hypothermia – a condition where the infants’body temperature drops below the normal temperature required for metabolism and body function. The Philips Efficia range of infant Warmers and Incubators are intended to reduce infant mortality which is the need of the hour in India. Other major causes for infant mortality are neonatal jaundice and respiratory distress, which are addressed by products such asBiliChek transcutaneous bilirubinometer,BiliTx phototherapy system and NeoPAP respiratory support solution for neonates” said Dr Wido Menhardt, CEO, Philips innovation Campus.

“The launch today is in line with our commitment to focus on next generation healthcare solutions. We believe that this whole new suite of products launched today will provide value to customers through cost effective solutions and greater efficiencies. We have solutions for premium urban corporate hospitals as well as tier-2 cities and primary health centers.” said Krishnakumar, President - Philips Healthcare India.

It is also important to monitor the bilirubin levels in infants since neonatal jaundice is common in newborn babies, affecting nearly half of them in the first two weeks of life. The Philips BiliChek measures bilirubin levels in a non-invasive manner making use of light instead of a needle, reducing pain and trauma to the babies. The most convenient aspect of  BiliChek is that, it can be utilized without the hassles of undergoing a lab test and waiting for results. 

BiliTX wraps babies in healing light. Neonatal jaundice can be effectively treated through phototherapy, and, Philips through its global expertise in healthcare and lighting is focused on developing products that support the infant’s development and the health of the mother.

With NeoPAP Philips provides a sophisticated neonatal CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) delivery system, developed to treat newborns and infants with Respiratory Distress Syndrome (RDS). This non-invasive, dynamic system features a lightweight interface made of soft, skin-friendly silicone to ensure patient comfort and safety.

Philips Innovation Campus, whose vision is to create innovative and meaningful healthcare solutionsfor the community, with focus on constantly improving patient care, believes that this launch will provide easy access and efficient healthcare forall.