Genpact, a professional services firm focused on delivering digital transformation, announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Commonwealth Informatics, Inc. (CI), a market-leading provider of cloud-based drug safety analytics products and services for medical research and healthcare delivery headquartered near Boston, Mass. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. This transaction is not expected to be material to current year financial performance.
With this acquisition, the Genpact pharmacovigilance artificial intelligence (PVAI) suite of capabilities is expected to be the first in the industry to establish a closed-loop, machine-learning system across the entire pharmacovigilance information value chain. Incorporating the Commonwealth Vigilance Workbench (CVW) software and the deep expertise of the CI team, Genpact will enable life sciences companies to establish a new approach for pharmacovigilance – one which leverages the wealth of available data in an effort to better predict and prevent adverse effects of medicines and thereby protect patient safety, while at the same time improving data quality and operational efficiency.
Genpact’s PVAI capabilities incorporate natural language processing and machine learning techniques to reliably and accurately extract and process adverse event data from unstructured and partially-structured source documents. The integration of CVW with Genpact’s PVAI offering for automated and intelligent case processing is expected to create a pharmacovigilance system that continually learns from the wider healthcare delivery ecosystem, accelerates and enhances signal detection and evaluation, and better protects patient safety.
Commonwealth Informatics is led by a widely-respected services and development team whose products and services span signal detection, signal evaluation, risk assessment, benefit-risk assessment, and population health informatics. CVW consists of a set of integrated modules that are delivered via a software as a service model. Commonwealth Informatics developed the modules in close collaboration with leading pharmacovigilance teams within pharmaceutical companies and regulatory agencies. The modules provide support for generating and assessing evidence from individual case safety reports, clinical trial data sets, and electronic health records. CVW is used by life sciences and biotech companies, healthcare providers, and government agencies such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).
“With the integration of Commonwealth Informatics’ ground-breaking signal management solution into the Genpact PVAI suite of capabilities, we can better help life sciences companies achieve end-to-end transformations of their pharmacovigilance operating models, serving as their single go-to partner,” said Balkrishan “BK” Kalra, business leader for Life Sciences and Healthcare at Genpact. “We believe that our enhanced PVAI suite has the potential to be revolutionary in its impact across the industry, shifting resources from transaction processing to analyzing the effects of medicines on public health. Genpact’s PVAI offering is currently being implemented by a number of large pharmaceutical companies, including a top-five global pharmaceutical leader. With the added capabilities from CI, we are excited to provide a comprehensive solution capable of transforming pharmacovigilance.”
“Commonwealth Informatics is thrilled to join forces with Genpact and combine our software and expertise in close collaboration with our customers to create the future of pharmacovigilance systems,” said Geoffrey Gordon, founder and president, Commonwealth Informatics. “We are also excited to use this strong foundation as the basis for future work with healthcare organizations to close the loop and realize the full potential of a learning healthcare system.”
Genpact currently serves the majority of the top global life sciences companies, helping pharmaceutical and medical devices companies pursue global growth, achieve cost reduction, increase speed to market, and improve regulatory compliance by providing a range of digital solutions, analytics services, and business process transformation expertise.
Today, global smartphone brand Vivo announced the launch of Vivo #PassTheSwag, a global dance movement aimed to unite both football and music fans around the world to create an iconic memorable moment for the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
The initiative will bring people together through a common dance language and to the tunes of the Official Song for the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia, ‘Live it Up’, by Nicky Jam, Will Smith and Era Istrefi. Vivo hopes to empower fans to capture unforgettable memories and express themselves through Vivo #PassTheSwag during the World Cup, aligning with its product focus on creating smartphones with quality sound, ultimate photographic experience and cutting-edge technology.
As part of the launch, fans from all around the world are encouraged to share videos of themselves on social media as they #PassTheSwag to the tune of the Official Song. Throughout the tournament, fans watching it live will also be encouraged to #PassTheSwag during the Vivo Super DJ Show at all 64 matches.
Speaking about the announcement, Michael Chang, Brand Director, International Business, Vivo, said, “The FIFA World Cup is the biggest stage in world football, and a massive celebration which brings together people from across the globe. In sponsoring the 2018 FIFA World Cup, we encourage fans to go beyond being just an audience, but to become a participant, a creator, and to enable extraordinary moments to be seen, shared and remembered.”
“Globally, we’ve seen how, when tied together, music and performance goes hand-in-hand with sports to create truly extraordinary moments. #PassTheSwag brings to life our campaign theme “My Time, My FIFA World Cup”, in getting everyone excited and by allowing fans to be part of the World Cup through a fun and catchy dance”, added Chang.
Vivo #PassTheSwag is part of the Vivo Super Time project which also consists of music themed activities like the Vivo Super DJ Show at all the matches, and Vivo Super Time during the Official Song Performance at the Final Match Show. Together with the Vivo Super Fan photographer programme, which provides fans unprecedented pitch-side, stadium and warm up session access to capture and share these extraordinary moments, Vivo Super Time is part of the brand’s global World Cup campaign, ‘My time, My FIFA World Cup’.
India is booming as an emerging market for the increasingly popular EB-5Visa. Due to the sudden rise in the demand, it has been published earlier that some countries including India will hit retrogression this year. Retrogression results in an extended waiting period for visas due to any one country exceeding its quota in a given year. Nysa Global is offering in India a project through which people can beat the backlog and get EB-5 approval on an expedited basis. Thus far applicants to this project have received approval in less than 90 days.
At the EB-5 Advocacy Conference in April 2018, the National Visa Center (N.V.C.), the department that issues the immigrant visa announced that India will begin to be impacted by visa retrogression by June 2019. A final action date (FAD) marks the end of a “current visa” status for a country, indicating a backlog. It does not affect the project, but it does effect processing time for applicants. Countries with a FAD mean that an investor is only eligible for the green card if the priority date is available. Due to the dramatic increase in demand for EB-5 visas in India, the State Department projects that it will impose a FAD for India in June 2019 – but it could well be earlier. Once a FAD has been imposed, Indian nationals will likely wait for 5 years to get the visa.
Nysa is the only company in India to introduce a project that has received federal expedited status.
“By investing in this project, Indians can beat the visa backlog as they can potentially secure their Green Cards within this visa year (till Sep 30, 2018) and in the early part of the next visa year and beat the impact of retrogression” added Pankaj Joshi, Managing Director, Nysa Global.
This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Indian’s to get approved in record time and beat the backlog that is coming!!
“Non-Resident Indians in the US on valid non-immigrant visas, like H1-B, L-1 and F-1 could potentially file for their Adjustment of Status and secure the employment authorization cards immediately upon approval” added Joshi.
APEA simultaneously provides a platform to successful entrepreneurs for sharing ideas, resources and opportunities to boost innovation and business development, while ensuring fair business practices. This year, the event was attended by more than 250 industry leaders representing an elite group of prominent entrepreneurs in the subcontinent.
Commenting on his achievement, Prateek Garg, MD and CEO, Progressive Infotech said, “I am extremely delighted to be a part of this august group of successful entrepreneurs. At Progressive, our approach has always been aimed at delivering unmatched customer satisfaction. Since the market is dynamic, so has been our attitude while addressing it. This dynamic approach has helped us establish robust processes and frameworks at Progressive and enabled us to stay relevant within the global marketplace since our inception. I’m indeed honoured to be felicitated by APEA, however, I’d like to mention that this recognition is equally credited to my team at Progressive Infotech without whom none of my contributions to the industry would be possible.”
Progressive Infotech, one of India’s leading Managed Services Providers, recently celebrated the win of its CEO Prateek Garg at the 9th ‘Asia Pacific Entrepreneurship Awards’ held in New Delhi. Prateek received this award for his continued efforts and innovations in the field of ‘IT, Internet and Telecommunication’.
APEA is a recognition program led by ‘Enterprise Asia’, a non-government organization promoting entrepreneurship in the region. It aims to acknowledge groundbreaking contributions of regional players amongst various industry segments and market verticals. This year, the annual event was hosted in New Delhi, receiving close to 100 nominations from which 22 winners across 11 industries were selected. Minister of State for External Affairs Gen. V.K. Singh was the Chief Guest at the event, along with Dr. Fong Chan Onn, Chairman, Enterprise Asia and Mr. William Ng, President, Enterprise Asia.
HappynessFactory.in, India’s first goal-based financial planning portal launched a one-of-its-kind “family” feature that enables family members to co-invest toward common goals such as retirement, kids’ education, home buying and many more.
One of the key learnings that the founding team of Happyness Factory brought in from their 13 years of helping families plan their finances is: goals of a family are best achieved when everyone’s on it together. Accordingly, the “family” feature was conceived as the first and only one in the country that allows members of a family to co-invest for common goals.
Take for instance, a goal like higher education costing Rs 40 lakhs today. An investor who wishes to build a corpus for her son’s higher education in 10 years would have to aim for Rs 86 lakhs, assuming inflation at 8%. This requires a monthly investment of approximately Rs 33,000 in equity funds. If the wife opts to allocate Rs 15,000, the husband can put in the remaining Rs 18,000 required for meeting the goal.
Moreover, once investments are in place, each member of the family can track progress toward the goal and view how their individual contributions are helping to reach the goal.
Children too can join their parents to contribute to goals like their higher education and marriage. Children above the age of 18 can be added to the primary contributor’s “family”. Up to 4 persons can invest for shared goals.
Without this feature, the common practice was for spouses to split goals and invest separately for those. So, the wife may invest for the kids’ education while the husband focuses on building a corpus for their house, retirement, etc.
No wonder then that the feature has been well appreciated by users and the results that followed have been phenomenal. In the words of Milin Shah, Head of Product Development and Planning at Happyness Factory, “This is not just because financial objectives are met in 100% of cases but also because of the emotional connect it brings as people identify and agree on goals as a family. This approach works well in the Indian context because family values run deep in our society.”
At CEBIT 2018, Huawei released its latest IoT and AI products to help enterprises create intelligent and connectivity genes to build digital neurons and accelerate digital enterprise transformation.
At Huawei's press conference at CEBIT, Qiu Heng, President of Global Marketing, Enterprise Business Group, Huawei, delivered a keynote speech titled "Creating Intelligence & Connectivity Genes for Enterprises' Digital Neurons". In his speech, Mr. Qiu explored how IoT helps enterprises connect the physical and digital worlds. IoT creates a cycle whereby sensors embedded in the physical world provide continuous feedback to the digital world which then controls the physical world. With IoT in place, AI helps this cycle become more efficient and automated to effectively merge the two worlds. IoT and AI will serve as the intelligent and connectivity genes in digital enterprises' nervous system.
In this year's CEBIT, Huawei released its latest IoT and AI products to help enterprises create intelligent and connectivity genes for their digital neurons, accelerating digital enterprise transformation.
Intelligent and Connectivity Genes Are Indispensable
Huawei's Global Connectivity Index (GCI) report shows that intelligent connectivity will bring a new wave of innovation and drive economic development. By 2025, the digital economy is estimated to reach US$23 trillion in size. Intelligent connectivity will impact governments, public utilities, manufacturing, and many other sectors, and determine how industries manage their digital transformation.
In addition to its basic abilities in IoT, AI, big data, video, ICP, and GIS services, Huawei leverages its core abilities in chipsets, algorithms, and architecture design to build digital platforms. Huawei products cover from chips and terminals to cloud and edge computing infrastructures. These products feature ultra-high performance in computing, storage, and communications. In future digital enterprises, functional modules (also called neurons) will serve as digital platforms and end-to-end AI and IoT capabilities will enable the neuron's intelligence and connectivity genes.
Better Intelligence Gene: Industry's First AI-Enabled Software-Defined Camera
AI applications have been widely used in almost all industries. Auto-pilot, unmanned supermarkets, intelligent voice assistants and more. AI has become a "nuclear power plant" that drives digital industry transformation and AI development will depend on data, algorithms, and computing power. Among these three key elements, computing power can bring the most significant improvement in AI advancement. IDC analysis shows that from 2014 to 2020, data volume will increase by 5.5 times. Algorithms such as identification accuracy will improve by 4%. Whereas, computing power will grow by a staggering 30 times. This means a GPU will only need 1 day to finish a computing task that a CPU takes 30 days to complete. Gartner's report says by 2022, the majority of industrial IoT analytics will be performed at the edge rather than in the cloud, up from less than 10% in 2017. This proves that AI's rapid development relies on computing power improvement, particularly the improvement of edge computing power.
Huawei offers full-stack AI solutions that comprise chips, AI terminals, GPU servers, video PaaS cloud platforms, and more, to improve computing power and intelligence levels from end to end. At CEBIT 2018, Huawei released the industry's first AI-enabled software-defined camera (SDC), the M/X series. This series of cameras can be applied to a vast range of scenarios and improve image processing capabilities by 25 times. In low-illumination environments, the characteristic acquisition rate exceeds 85%. These cameras also have a number of unique features:
Environment Adaptive Operations: The cameras have preset parameter configuration for the day time, night time, and in different weather such as cloud, rain, and snow. When detecting time or whether changes, the cameras automatically adjust parameter settings to ensure video quality. No manual intervention is needed, which significantly improves the system operating efficiency.
Front-end Intelligence: While traditional cameras can only run a single application, an M/X camera can dynamically load algorithms to run multiple applications.
Continuous Evolution: Huawei cameras allow online upgrades to ensure continuous operation. In contrast, traditional cameras require remote manual upgrades which typically results in operational interruptions.
Upgrade of the Connectivity Gene: Connected Vehicle Platform and Wireless IoT Connectivity Solutions
In addition to the OceanConnect IoT Platform, Huawei's IoT solution also includes wired and wireless connectivity, edge computing, and chipset (LiteOS) modules. The is the industry's most comprehensive IoT solution, and Huawei continues to advance the solution to meet fast-evolving enterprise needs. At CEBIT Huawei unveiled: the upgraded OceanConnect IoT Platform which now supports Connected Vehicle systems; the eLTE-IoT Solution which has new capabilities to drastically improve performance; and the new eLTE-DSA Solution. These solutions are designed to significantly upgrade the platform's connectivity gene.
The Connected Vehicle Platform is the key ICT infrastructure that enables automotive companies' digital transformation. As the digital engine of intelligent and connected vehicles, this powerful OceanConnect IoV Platform provides four key enablers for the transformation of manufacturers:
Connectivity enablement: The platform provides safe, reliable connectivity for vehicles, supporting hundreds of millions of connections and concurrent access from millions of vehicles. The flexible platform supports deployment in private, public and hybrid clouds, accommodating their different architectures. Huawei uses its global public cloud deployment capabilities to support automotive companies' global business operations.
Data enablement: The platform collects vehicle status and driving behavior data, and analyzes the data to create profiles of drivers and vehicles (Digital Twins) on the cloud. The precise analysis of driving behavior and scenarios enables intelligent content distribution and service recommendations.
Ecosystem enablement: By separating data from services, the platform helps automotive companies control their digital assets, converge third-party content and applications, and build a thriving ecosystem around their business.
Evolution enablement: The Connected Vehicle Platform interconnects with V2X. The cooperation covers vehicle intelligence and intelligent vehicle-road synergy to evolve the intelligent experience for drivers while delivering new levels of safety and efficiency.
The upgraded eLTE-IoT Solution uses technological innovation to further improve its performance. The solution now covers a radius of 10 km with 10% stronger signals. Its communications latency is reduced by 50% and the maximum standby time is extended to 10 years.
Newly unveiled by Huawei at CEBIT, the eLTE-DSA Solution uses Discrete Spectrum Aggregation (DSA) technology to create a large bandwidth spectrum through the convergence of small spectrums – some of which are continuous, while others are scattered. DSA technology can flexibly select and aggregate them to bring several valuable features. The solution supports the flexible aggregation of all the 280 spectrums around 230 MHz; Huawei will also promote the application of DSA in other frequencies in the future. eLTE-DSA also improves the overall coverage radius by 40% and the air interface latency is reduced to 20ms. In addition, the solution achieves five-nine (99.999%) in overall stability.
The release of these new products is just the beginning. Huawei will host the grand Huawei Connect 2018 in Shanghai this October to present more AI products and launch its flagship digital platform. Huawei Enterprise BG follows the company's vision and commitment, and aims to bring digital to every organization for a fully connected, intelligent world.
Huawei together with its partners and customers is showcasing new digital transformation solutions to orchestrate a digital symphony at CEBIT from June 11-15 in Germany, the home of classical music. It is also hosting activities and sharing best practices around Cloud Computing, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data, Internet of Things (IoT) and Software-Defined Networking (SDN), all of which play a critical role in today's digital transformation.
WeP Solutions Launches Asset Management Services Under its Managed Print Services Portfolio
WeP Solutions Ltd, the no.1 Managed Printing Solutions (MPS) Company in India, has launched an Asset Management service with the objective of increasing MPS penetration in India. The service will help an organization in reducing the costs associated with printing and copying, reducing staff time related to managing and supporting imaging devices, improving the level of support to end users, letting them focus on other business priorities, and contributing to environmental objectives.
Majority of businesses depend heavily on paper for various business needs. Such reliance on paper is not only inefficient but also unsustainable – financially and from the point of view of the environment. The Asset Management service is thus aimed at bringing discipline to the print infrastructure for businesses. It will enable them to streamline their print environment effectively without worrying about existing/any immediate investment.
This service is offered on a ‘zero capital’ basis in which the printers are deployed at the customer’s premises and commercials are on a ‘Pay Per Page’ basis. Companies get a monthly automated print report, and 100% visibility of present and future costs. WeP also offers a periodic joint assessment of the enhanced print environment. With their mobile app, companies need not wait and can log calls and monitor them. They can also generate invoices and pay them online.
Speaking about this, Manish Garg, Chief Executive MPS, WeP Solutions Ltd said, “One of the key drivers of MPS is the continued reliance on paper-based services, which can prove costly for businesses. However, with our Asset Management services, organizations will be able to save up to 40% of their costs in terms of manpower, running the printers, and issues with toner, etc. Launched last month, this service makes everything hassle-free for our customers. Another value-added service that accompanies this is called device management. For example, it is possible for one person to monitor &control several printers, connected to one network, through a single dashboard from one location. WeP will also help organizations who come under the ambit of our Asset Management services, meeting certain parameters, to replace their printers.”
MPS being the future of the printing and imaging industry culminates the printing/ copying /scanning requirements of organizations.Understanding this need, WeP introduced the concept in the Indian market and aims to innovate new ways and revamp the traditional ways of how MPS is done in India. It has more than 500 happy enterprise corporates being serviced in more than 2000 locations spread across India. WeP has installed over 25,000+ machines and has a retention capacity of about 99%.
WeP has been transforming itself continuously adapting to changing technology and market needs. In the initial years, their primary business came from impact print technology. Over the years, it has diversified from a hardware-centric company to a solutions-based one. The group has three business lines: WeP Digital, WeP MPS, and WeP Retail. Together, these cater to 1,000+ enterprise customers and 80,000+ retail customers in 2000+ cities across India.Their MPS or Managed Print Serviceswas a first in the country. With WeP Retail and Digital, the company has now delved into emerging segments like Digital Services and Solutions for enterprise and retail industry in line with the Indian government’s Digital India and Make in India initiatives.
Amazon India has announced the launch of the School Bookstore on Amazon.in. As schools across the country reopen for the new academic year, the School Bookstore will seek to lighten the load on parents and students of running around for school supplies and be their one stop destination to shop by class, subject and board.
Right from nursery to 12th standard, parents can find books for all subjects across different boards - CBSE, ICSE & IGCSE - and publishers such as NCERT, with delivery at their doorsteps. The store is segregated into books for each class and subject, across different syllabi, for an easy shopping experience.
In addition to textbooks, students getting ready for competitive exams like the JEE, NEET, Olympiads can find study material on this store. Guidebooks and sample papers are also available to help students prepare for these exams.
Commenting on the launch, Saurabh Srivastava, Director – Category Management, Amazon India said “We are dedicated to building the best-in-class store when it comes to buying books online. Textbooks are a basic need for school students and often, parents find it difficult to source them. Now customers can buy these books and other school supplies on Amazon.in with the convenience of getting them delivered at their doorsteps. We also have school specific bundles of textbooks and notebooks recommended by various schools. Finding the right school books for their children isn’t a challenge for parents anymore.”
