75F Launches Epidemic ModeTM to Make Workplaces Safe and Healthy During the COVID 19 Crisis

As offices prepare to reopen across India, buildings are the new front in the fight against COVID-19. Today, 75F announced 75F Epidemic ModeTM, a new HVAC software sequence that ensure commercial buildings are healthier while keeping employees and customers safe. The system features various components such as indoor air flushes, where post working hours the entire air within the premises is replaced with fresh air from outside and during office hours ventilation from outside is increased to limit movement of airborne particles and reuse of indoor air. All these are based on the latest guidance from scientists, government organizations, and global industry leaders such as ISHRAE which has been adopted by the Indian Government, ASHRAE and the CDC.

Recent studies show the spread of COVID-19 appears to be occurring through airborne transmission of aerosols, particles 1-5 microns in size which cannot be reliably filtered out using a MERV-13 or HEPA filter. While much of the focus is on droplets 100-1000 microns in size produced by coughing or sneezing, a large quantity of aerosolized infectious particles are also produced, and are more likely to be produced by asymptomatic individuals or those who do not know they are infected simply from breathing or speaking. A recent study showed that more than 1000 of these virus-containing aerosols are emitted every minute of speaking, more proof that without dilution ventilation from outside air, buildings have ahigh risk of viral build-up and exposure.

In response to this, various organisations such as ISHRAE (Indian Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-conditioning Engineers), ASHRAE (American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-conditioning Engineers) and the CDC (Centre for Disease Control) have released new guidelines for the operation and control of HVAC systems to reduce disease transmission from infectious airborne particles and ensure a safe and healthy workplace.

The 75F Epidemic ModeTM achieves the directives through its specific application profiles; Smart PurgeTM and Smart Enhance VentilationTM.

75F Smart Purge

75F’s Smart Purge application profile works in pre- and post-occupancy settings and fully adheres to ISHRAE, ASHRAE recommendations to prevent re-circulation of air and to purge the air before and after occupancy.

75F Smart Enhanced Ventilation

This profile ensures the indoor environment remains as safe as possible during a building’s occupied period and reduces risk of infection from aerosolized particle.

Apart from minimizing viral loads in buildings the 75F Epidemic ModeTM also delivers significant energy savings. Increasing ventilation from 20% outside air to 90% outside air can normally lead to a high energy bill, but with the 75F Epidemic Mode profiles, concentration of infectious airborne particles is reduced while energy consumption is minimized

“The world is in the midst of a pandemic with so many unknowns, where the brightest minds are developing innovative ways to modify their businesses and 75F Epidemic Mode does that for the commercial building industry,” said Deepinder Singh, CEO and Founder of 75F.

“Being able to give companies and their employees some peace of mind that their facilities managers are taking the initiative to make their environments safe and healthy is extremely important and we believe will become the norm even when the outbreak is over”, adds Gaurav Burman, APAC President of 75F.

Epidemic ModeTM is updated by 75F as guidelines from these organisations evolve or new data emerges. This means it offers the most current sequences that minimize operating expense and viral transmission, while improving indoor air quality (IAQ) and energy efficiency. Furthermore, 75F Epidemic ModeTM does not require any manual programming and there is no risk of equipment damage from running the system outside typical parameters.

Apart from minimizing operating expenses the 75F Epidemic ModeTM also delivers significant energy savings. Increasing ventilation from 20% outside air to 90% outside air can normally lead to a high energy bill, but with the 75F Epidemic Mode profiles, concentration of infectious airborne particles is reduced while energy consumption is minimized.

75F offers the only system on the market today currently implementing these healthy building measures, which are available free of charge to all customers in office buildings, retail businesses, schools, restaurants, and apartment buildings. Once the pandemic is controlled, 75F technology will allow facility managers to easily, and remotely, disable these measures, with a return to 75F's award-winning algorithms to improve the comfort of occupants.  

Copyright Clearance Center Partners with Editage to Offer Research Promotion Solutions to Authors through RightsLink

Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC), a leader in advancing copyright, accelerating knowledge, and powering innovation, announces a partnership with Editage, the flagship brand of Cactus Communications (CACTUS), a technology company accelerating scientific advancement, to offer its Research Promotion Solutions for authors through the growing community of RightsLink for Scientific Communications publishers. 

As scholarly publishers diversify revenue streams due to changing market dynamics, it’s imperative they protect and strengthen relationships with influential and emerging authors. This strategic collaboration between CCC and Editage gives RightsLink publishers the immediate ability to offer high-impact research promotion solutions to authors at the time of manuscript acceptance without incurring additional overhead.

In the increasingly competitive world of scholarly research, publishers seek creative, cost-effective ways to expand the range of services for their authors as a means to build loyalty and ensure a continuous stream of submissions. Publishing in a prestigious journal is important to building an author’s brand, and authors must also find ways to build visibility for their research as funders and institutions look at new ways to assess research impact. With this partnership, an author whose manuscript has been accepted by a RightsLink publisher can order infographics, plain-language summaries, video, and news stories through RightsLink from the science communication experts at Editage in order to support the promotion of the research upon publication.

“An author needs to adopt the mindset that publishing a paper is only the beginning of making one’s research results visible to the world, and that they need to promote their findings to peers, adjacent peers, the public, and policymakers in order to maximize societal impact,” said Donald Samulack, Head, Global Stakeholder Engagement, CACTUS. “We are excited to partner with CCC to enable RightsLink publishers to empower authors with the opportunity to consider research promotion solutions, along with other publication options through traditional and touch-free workflows at the final stages of the publishing process. All of these elements, although different in character, are equally important to the success of the published paper.”

The emergence of transformative agreements such as Read and Publish and Publish and Read, as well as of Pure Open Access, has changed the face of scholarly publishing. With its industry leading RightsLink for Scientific Communications solution, CCC leverages its extensive experience collecting, managing, and reporting of core Article Processing Charges (APCs) to give publishers new opportunities to grow and manage their businesses. RightsLink is trusted by 30 of the world’s leading publishers as they implement Open Access agreements with over 300 institutions and support thousands of authors from more than 125 countries. In the past year, RightsLink publishers have approved more than 1,500 Open Access and transformative agreement funding requests. 

“Plan S and other funder mandates to accelerate Open Access continue to foster meaningful dialogue for change in scholarly publishing,” said Gretchen Gasser-Ellis, Vice President and Managing Director, Publisher Solutions, CCC. “Our partnership with Editage will build on what publishers are doing to create new solutions within the scholarly publishing ecosystem and strengthen their strategic author programs.”

CCC is a trusted intermediary and recognized market leader uniquely positioned to facilitate dialog among key stakeholders in the author, publisher, institution, funding and vendor communities. CCC also encourages engagement across boundaries through an ongoing series of roundtables, panel events, webinars, podcasts, and blogs. CCC is a member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), the International Association of STM Publishers (STM), and a Sustaining Member of the Society of Scholarly Publishing (SSP). 

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.

LTI to Launch Accelerated Migration Program for SAP-Based Enterprises with Amazon Web Services

Larsen & Toubro Infotech, a global technology consulting and digital solutions company, today announced an Accelerated Migration Program for customers of SAP with Amazon Web Services (AWS). As part of this program, LTI will help customers move their SAP ERP, SAP S/4HANA, and other SAP workloads from on-premise to AWS leveraging its intelligent, automated, migration acceleration platform and services.

To enable faster migration to AWS, the program offers Discovery Module, Build and Deployment Module, and Validation Module to enterprises across industry segments. The Add-on components of the program include an SAP profiler, analyzer for SAP S/4HANA, Auto-code remediation for SAP HANA compliance, Security Module and Smart Testing module with a vast repository of test scenarios and test cases.

“LTI has a successful track record of enabling AWS cloud transformations across highly complex SAP customer landscapes,” said Siddharth Bohra, Chief Business Officer, Tech, Media, Consumer & Head of Digital and Analytics, LTI. “Working with AWS will help us digitize the core and bring this expertise to other SAP clients, leveraging our highly automated approach.”

LTI has achieved AWS SAP Competency status which establishes LTI as an Advanced Consulting Partner in the AWS Partner Network (APN) with certified technical proficiency and proven customer implementation success in migrating SAP environments to AWS. 

The Accelerated Migration expertise reflects the highest standards of LTI’s depth of knowledge in the functional and technical aspects of AWS cloud migration for SAP solutions. LTI itself is a very large and long-standing SAP customer and has migrated its internal SAP systems to AWS.

As an SAP customer, an AWS SAP Competency Partner, and global strategic services partner with SAP, LTI is positioned to be an ideal partner for any SAP customer migrating to AWS. LTI’s Accelerated Migration Program for SAP solutions speedily migrates and transforms SAP-based enterprises by lowering infrastructure costs while simultaneously improving agility, customer experience, and innovation.  

In October 2019, LTI acquired Powerup Technologies, an APN Premier Consulting Partner, bolstering its cloud consulting and digital transformation capabilities. LTI recently won the 2020 SAP Pinnacle Award as Industry Innovation Partner of the Year.

Swasth, a Tele-health Network, Launched to Provide Free Corona Care

Digital Healthcare Push 

* 100+ private and not-for-profit entities join hand to frame tech response to national crisis

* India’s first big push towards mass adoption of digital healthcare as a citizen empowering platform

* Swath platform facilitates seamless and remote interaction between registered medical practitioners and patients

* App-based consultation service in Hindi, English and Gujarati to begin with, and will be expanded to 25 Indian languages

A coalition of over 100 healthcare specialists have come together to launch Swasth, a nationwide telemedicine platform for Corona care, which digitally connects Indians to the best doctors and wellness providers. Swasth is a swift response promoted by the country’s health and technology leaders to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call to leverage telemedicine as a national priority in the current stressed times. The mobile app-based service leverages India’s technology prowess to deliver equal and affordable healthcare to 1.3 billion people, cutting across geographical and income divides.

This indigenous digital healthcare system is being launched at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic has challenged traditional service providers.

Mr. Kris Gopalakrishnan, a part of the Swasth Governing Council, said, “Swasth has brought together the best of resources in the country to provide free healthcare to bring quick relief during the crisis. Swasth will work to further public health goals and work in coordination with the Medical Council, public health organizations, and the private sector to expand quality healthcare access to the masses. I firmly believe that this crisis is a great opportunity to re-invent healthcare delivery in India.”

Swasth facilitates seamless, remote interaction between registered medical practitioners and patients through multiple modes of video and telephony. Swasth deploys AI based triaging to determine the care required, culminating in a digitally signed prescription and treatment advice.

Along with the free consultations, Swasth will also provide services like home quarantine assistance, diagnostics, pharmacies, hospital bed discovery and booking assistance at a subsidized cost.

All doctors on the Swasth platform are duly verified and undergo specially designed training programs on tele-consultation and COVID-19 clinical protocols.  Swasth is in full compliance with the industry-accepted cybersecurity norms for healthcare platforms. It uses a defense-in-depth approach to ensure that data is securely transmitted, stored, managed and accessed. Currently, the app supports consultation in Hindi, English and Gujarati and will be expanded to 25 Indian languages.

Swasth is the country’s first big push towards mass adoption of digital healthcare as a citizen empowering platform.

Dr Nachiket Mor, a member of the Governing Council, added, “Swasth is a unique non-profit coalition of members from multiple sections of the Indian healthcare ecosystem, including individual doctors, small and large hospitals, diagnostic labs, pharmacies, telemedicine platforms, insurance companies, and healthcare-technology companies, who have joined hands with the goal of creating affordable healthcare for all Indians in every nook and corner of the country, so that they can immediately get the care that they need for this crisis, as well as for all their other healthcare needs. Swasth will do this by making it easy for patients to smoothly access the services they need from its members, and will also enable each of its members to provide a wide range of high quality services to their patients, by giving them access to protocols, technologies, and platforms that are best in class, completely interoperable, and fully compliant with the latest guidelines.”

Dr NK Jairam, a key member of the project team, said, “As we move on with the current Corona pandemic and with social distancing being one of the key remedies to eradicate it, telemedicine is going to be an integral part of the healthcare system. Tele- consultation has been offered by doctors since the early 2000s, however, it has gained rapid momentum because of the current situation. With Swasth, telemedicine will gain a boost which will empower patients to make quick decisions and also teach them self-care.”

Abheek Singhi, Senior Partner at BCG, and member of the project team for this initiative, said,  "Swasth is a consortium of 70+ organizations and 200+ volunteers with a common goal of building a comprehensive COVID care platform in the short term and of leveraging technology to transform primary healthcare delivery in the medium term. This is the first time such a coalition like this has come together. BCG is privileged to be partnering with this alliance"

Swasth is created by a not-for-profit consortium of different players across healthcare providers, telehealth platforms, entrepreneurs, technology experts and doctors. Swasth received a grant of INR 10 crore ($1.3 million) from the ACT Grants, an umbrella platform of entrepreneurs and investors backing start-ups fighting the pandemic.

About Swasth

Swasth is a Not-for-Profit initiative that aims to leverage India’s proven clinical capabilities and technology capabilities to democratize access to quality primary care – for any citizen anywhere in India. Swasth will ensure access is affordable by leveraging digital technology to optimally use available provider capacity, and promote a system that fully adopts national health standards. A coalition of like-minded, relevant and successful physicians, professionals, technocrats and entrepreneurs from the healthcare ecosystem have voluntarily come together to pool in their time, intellect, IP and financial resources to help India leapfrog and provide quality healthcare using best in class digital technologies.

Cure.fit Celebrates International Yoga Day with 5.6 Million Surya Namaskars

Cure.fit, India’s leading integrated holistic healthcare platform, witnessed an incredible turnout for its Surya Namaskar Challenge as a part of International Yoga Day. On 21st June, close to 1 million yoga enthusiasts participated in the challenge throughout the day and together clocked in over 5.6 million Surya Namaskars across cure.fit platforms, social media & corporate tie ups.

Since all cure.fit and mind.fit centres are currently shut due to lockdown regulations, the challenge was executed entirely online, with a live counter to track progress. There were 170+ sessions including various forms of Yoga and meditation for users to partake in. Surya Namaskars were integrated as part of warm up and cool down across all our formats for the day.

To keep users engaged, Cure.fit hosted an in-app Yoga quiz, expert session on the benefits of yoga by Nandita Das, masterclass sessions by Vidya Malwade & Aashka Goradia. In addition, cure.fit experts Rishabh Telang, Shwetambari Shetty & Divya Rolla also conducted sessions. More than 100 cure.fit employees also showed enthusiastic participation in the Surya Namaskar Challenge.

Commenting on the success of the campaign, Ankit Nagori, Co-founder, cure.fit, said: “Knowing how important a practice like Yoga is we felt it was appropriate to encourage people, in a fun way, to embrace the Surya Namaskar asana on Yoga Day. It is at the very core of Yoga and has numerous physical and mental health benefits. We are so happy that close to 1 million people took part in this and spread the message with us. Going forward, we hope to see many more people adopt it as a way of life.”

About Cure.fit

cure.Fit Healthcare Pvt Ltd is a holistic integrated healthcare platform headquartered in Bangalore. Founded in 2016 by Mukesh Bansal and Ankit Nagori, cure.fit aims to address preventive healthcare through a combination of engagement, coaching and delivery using a mix of online and offline channels. cure.fit caters to living a healthy life through three critical dimensions- eat.fit, mind.fit and cult.fit. While cult.fit focuses on physical strength and fitness; eat.fit for healthy and nutritive food, mind.fit for mental wellbeing and care.fit for integrated medical and lifestyle care. cure.fit is an app based service provider and is available on Android and ios.  

Vedanta’s Nand Ghar Project Rolls Out Digital e-Learning Modules for Children in Villages of UP, Rajasthan and Odisha

Vedanta Limited’s, flagship project “Nand Ghar” has rolled out e-learning modules for home-schooling through WhatsApp groups across villages of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Odisha.

The e-learning modules consists of stories, games, rhymes, home based activities, moral science lessons and more for children below six years of age. ICDS, Government of Rajasthan issued an order to roll out Nand Ghar e-content along with UNICEF e-content for children of all 60,000+ Anganwadi centres reaching out to more than 12 lac children in the state.

Complimenting Vedanta on this initiative, Dr. K. K. Pathak, Secretary, Women and Child Development Department, Govt. of Rajasthan, said, “Amidst the pandemic, with curtailed  classroom education, e-learning has come to the forefront across the world. I'm delighted that WCD, ICDS Rajasthan has been successfully imparting education across 60,000+ anganwadis through e-learning. This has been possible with the joint efforts of Vedanta and UNICEF who have provided the much needed support. From creation of e-learning content to on ground delivery, Vedanta's contribution in this initiative is highly appreciable.”

At a juncture of a changing era, this initiative has proved to be a game changer.  It has opened a window of possibility, where-in Education is being made available and accessible to every child of around thousands of villages in India.

Speaking on the initiative, Mr. Anil Agarwal, Chairman - Vedanta Resources, said, “The spread of Covid-19 pandemic leading to closure of schools and colleges has affected billions of children and youth worldwide. The higher income families have access to technology and internet, however it is the lower income families that are bearing the brunt of the unprecedented pandemic. With the Anganwadi centres closed at this point, the need for uninterrupted education of children remains our priority. Thus, with an objective that no child is bereft of education, Nand Ghar has launched its e-learning modules through mobile phones reaching all Nand Ghar villages. This is a step on our part to bridge the gap and make sure that digital self-learning becomes an unlimited resource to all”

Vedanta project Nand Ghar has already constructed more than 1300 Nand Ghars across 7 states in India. The Nand Ghars are equipped with televisions for e-learning, solar panels for reliable power, safe drinking water, clean toilets and have emerged as an ideal model for replication in other parts of the country. The project aims to transform lives of 8.5 crore children through 14 lakh anganwadis across the country.

The core services provided at Nand Ghars are pre-school education to children (3-6 years) through e-learning, BaLA designs and smart kits, nutrition through pre-packed hot cooked meals to children, pregnant and lactating women, healthcare through Mobile Health Van and support to Community Health Centre, women empowerment through skill, credit linkage and entrepreneurship development.