New Terumo–Tata Elxsi Center to Accelerate AI-powered Medical Device Innovation

Tata Elxsi, a global leader in design and technology services, and Terumo Corporation, a leading Japan-based medical innovation company, have inaugurated the Terumo–Tata Elxsi Offshore Development Center. The new facility is dedicated to advancing cardiac and vascular solutions, strengthening engineering and innovation capabilities, and providing continuous lifecycle support across international markets.

Driving Next-Gen Medical Technologies

The center brings together multidisciplinary teams, combining Tata Elxsi’s expertise in design, engineering, verification, regulatory compliance, and localisation with cutting-edge applications of AI, GenAI, and digital technologies in software engineering. This integrated approach enables faster product development, regional adaptation, and improved cost efficiency while addressing the growing demand for patient-centric medical devices.

Enhancing Global Availability

By leveraging Tata Elxsi’s cross-functional capabilities, the collaboration aims to improve the reliability and performance of cardiovascular technologies, ensuring they meet stringent industry standards and the evolving needs of healthcare providers and patients worldwide.

Fumihisa Hirose, President of Terumo’s Cardiac & Vascular Company, emphasized the strategic importance of the center: “This new Offshore Development Center strengthens our ability to innovate faster and deliver high-quality medical technologies across global markets. Tata Elxsi’s integrated design, engineering, and regulatory expertise will help us accelerate our global product roadmap while maintaining the highest standards of safety and compliance.”

Sreevatsa Sahasranaman, Senior Vice President & Head – Healthcare & Life Sciences at Tata Elxsi, highlighted the long-term vision: "This Offshore Development Center represents a comprehensive partnership model with Terumo to bring Tata Elxsi’s multi-disciplinary expertise to drive innovation and cost efficiencies across Terumo’s cardiovascular portfolio. Enhanced by AI and GenAI-powered technologies, we are committed to helping Terumo deliver next-gen medical technologies to global and emerging markets.”

Strategic Impact

The collaboration marks a significant milestone in the healthcare technology sector, reinforcing India’s role as a hub for advanced engineering and design services while supporting Terumo’s mission to deliver innovative cardiovascular solutions worldwide.

Healthcare & Lifesciences, and IT Services Top Among Industries of Startups that Created Over 16.6 Lakh Direct Jobs

Recognized startups have created over 16.6 lakh direct jobs across more than 55 varied industries. This is a testament to the vibrant startup ecosystem in India and the significant impact these startups are having on the economy.

Key Industries:

1. Healthcare & Lifesciences: 1,47,639 jobs
2. IT Services: 2,04,119 jobs
3. Professional & Commercial Services: 94,060 jobs
4. Services: 94,060 jobs
5. Retail: 33,114 jobs
6. Education: 90,414 jobs

Government Support:

The Startup India initiative has played a crucial role in nurturing this ecosystem, providing support through schemes like the Fund of Funds for Startuns (FFS) Startun India Seed.

The Startup India initiative has played a crucial role in nurturing this ecosystem, providing support through schemes like the Fund of Funds for Startups (FFS), Startup India Seed Fund Scheme (SISFS), and Credit Guarantee Scheme for Startups (CGSS).

Here's the industry-wise detailed list of direct jobs created by entities recognized as startups by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) as of October 31, 2024:

Industry	Number of Direct Jobs
Advertising	11,839
Aeronautics Aerospace & Defence	12,801
Agriculture	83,307
Artificial Intelligence (AI)	23,918
Airport Operations	1,205
Analytics	9,450
Animation	2,104
AR VR (Augmented + Virtual Reality)	5,848
Architecture Interior Design	10,326
Art & Photography	4,441
Automotive	39,535
Biotechnology	3,557
Chemicals	16,675
Computer Vision	2,484
Construction	88,702
Dating Matrimonial	717
Design	9,039
Education	90,414
Enterprise Software	24,899
Events	5,503
Fashion	24,253
Finance Technology	56,819
Food & Beverages	88,468
Green Technology	27,808
Healthcare & Lifesciences	1,47,639
House-Hold Services	17,530
Human Resources	87,983
Indic Language Startups	3,453
Internet of Things	14,885
IT Services	2,04,119
Logistics	11,608
Marketing	29,685
Media & Entertainment	20,515
Nanotechnology	1,850
Non-Renewable Energy	12,856
Other Specialty Retailers	14,179
Others	28,278
Passenger Experience	252
Pets & Animals	3,054
Professional & Commercial Services	94,060
Real Estate	15,873
Renewable Energy	41,523
Retail	33,114
Robotics	5,956
Safety	9,245
Security Solutions	27,907
Social Impact	7,973
Social Network	5,136
Sports	6,500
Technology Hardware	50,894
Telecommunication & Networking	16,524
Textiles & Apparel	38,867
Toys and Games	4,802
Transportation & Storage	30,509
Travel & Tourism	23,828
Waste Management	12,810
Total	16,67,519

Healofy awarded as India’s Greatest Brand 2018-2019 in Healthcare Industry

Healofy, India’s largest and fastest growing Women Social Network has announced that it has been awarded India’s greatest Brand 2018-2019 in Women and Child care category by Asia One’s India’s greatest Brand and Leaders 2018- 2019 event held at Taj Lands End hotel in September 2019 in Mumbai. The award function was attended by Minister of State for social justice and empowerment, Ramdas Athawale and over 500+ business leaders, investors and dignitaries from Asia.

The founders of the company, Gaurav Aggrawal and Shubham Maheshwari have also been felicitated with 40 most influential Indians under 40 2018-2019 by India’s greatest Brand and Leaders 2018- 2019 for their contribution to the society. Both the founders are also the proud recipients of Forbes 30 under 30 Asia. Healofy was selected for FbStart programme by Facebook in 2017.

Healofy connects millions of women across different stages of life right from getting married to becoming a mother and beyond. It started as a pregnancy and parenting community in September 2016. Since then, the platform has been expanding to cater to 100 million+ women in different stages of life who are smartphones users in tier 2,3 cities through quality content across regional languages. Healofy was founded by Gaurav Aggarwal and Shubham Maheshwari, alumni of IIT Guwahati and NIT Warangal

Through Healofy, Indian women can access credible content through a trusted community model in 9 Indian Languages - English, Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam. Healofy connects these women by different interest areas that they want to pursue such as earning from home, learning different skill sets, fashion, fitness, lifestyle, etc.

Healofy has successfully created a strong community of over 500,000 Daily Active Users (DAUs) and 1 million monthly active users on their Android app exhibiting strong engagement and retention.

The company also plans to catalyze network e-commerce by helping women from the smaller cities & towns to transact online. The aim is to map the entire offline experience of women (be it networking, shopping) in the online world.

In March 2019, Healofy raised $8M in Series A from BabyTree Group (01761.HK, China’s Largest Parenting Platform, a Public company), BAce Capital, a fund anchored by Alibaba’s Ant Financial Services Group and existing investor Omidyar Network India.

Healofy is India’s Largest Women Social Network where we connect millions of women across different stages of life right from getting married to becoming a mother and beyond.

Today, there is a lack of quality content in regional languages for 100 million+ women in tier 2,3 cities who are smartphone users across all stages of life and Healofy is helping these women access credible content through a trusted community model in 9 Indian Languages - English, Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam.

Healofy also connects women by different interest areas that they want to pursue such as earning from home, learning different skill sets, fashion, fitness, lifestyle, etc.

About Gaurav Aggarwal

Gaurav Aggarwal, CEO, hails from Delhi. He studied Electrical Engg from IIT Guwahati. Healofy is his 3rd venture. He was awarded Forbes 30 under 30 Asia in 2017.

About Shubham Maheshwari

Shubham Maheshwari, CTO, studied Computer Science from NIT Warangal. He has worked with companies like Flipkart and CodeNation for a couple of years and awarded Forbes 30 under 30 Asia in 2017.

Cyber Attacks in the Healthcare Sector: Diagnosis and Treatment

Healthcare sector is an inevitable part of the society that has not only helped in increasing the lifespan but also, has improved the quality of life. Healthcare is one of the fastest developing sectors since the measure of development it has seen is incomparable to other sectors. Unlike other sectors, almost everyone is connected to this sector.

The advancement in technology has resulted in advancement in the healthcare sector as well. Medical devices are being based on the state-of-the-art technology. From simple wearable devices like smart inhalers, insulin pen, continuous glucose monitoring device, connected contact lenses to equipment such as MRI machines, smart drills, smart beds et. Researchers are using virtual reality to integrate robotic in medical surgeries. Even a few surgeries are being performed by robots in some parts of the world.

According to a report, healthcare sector has been the number one target with losses accounting to $1 billion. There are number of reasons behind its popularity among the attackers.

According to a report by Ponemon institute, within the timespan of two years, 89% of the healthcare organizations have suffered from data breaches in the U.S that resulted in the loss of an estimated $6.2 dollars to the sector.

As per HIPAA journal, breach in patient records during the year 2018 have doubled to more than 13 million records.

Journal of Cyber security predicts that there is a 75.6% chance of potential breach in 5 million records during the next year.

Huge database: In many cases of healthcare breaches, it has been observed that attackers breach into database, access patients records, steal them and sell them. According to a report, patient records are being sold for a meagre $50 on the dark web. In countries like U.S. attackers can access expensive medical services, products as well as expensive medicines with the help of stolen medical records. Healthcare sector has proven to be extremely fruitful for the attackers with a single record costing at an average $408.

Take the case of Anthem breach for example. Treated as the biggest data breach attack in the healthcare industry. On 4^th of February 2015, attackers hacked into the server of Anthem Inc. and stole the records of 78.8 million people.

Around 1.5 million patient records including the record of country’s prime minister, were accessed from Singapore government’s health database.

Research: Healthcare sector survives on research, invention and implementation. There was a time when a simple case of ‘fever’ would have cost a life. Nowadays, medical science has become advance enough to treat almost every form of cancer. Let alone a case of ‘fever’. The credit goes to the continuous research that is taking place in the healthcare sector. Many healthcare companies have become multi-million businesses because of an invention that has changed the medical science. Many of the cyber-attacks have led to attackers hacking into the system, stealing valuable research data and stealing it to the competition.

To mint money: As per the 2018 Verizon's Data Breach Investigations Report, ransomware attacks account to 85% of all the cyber-attacks on the healthcare sector. In 2016 alone, 88 percent of all the ransomware attacks were targeted on the healthcare sector in U.S. Indiana based healthcare system, Hancock health was hit by a ransomware attack that locked up the computers. The attack costed the company around $55,000 in bitcoins.

This integration of technology, its connectivity and reach within healthcare sector has made this sector extremely susceptible to cyber-attacks.

These statistics are extremely concerning since vulnerable and sensitive information such as PHI is in the hands of malicious entities that can misuse this information. On an average, 60 to 80 percent of the data breaches go unreported. As per the Thales report, only 32% of the organizations use encryption to protect their cloud data. Organizations are investing their money in security tools that are not updated and are unable to protect the data effectively. Healthcare industry invests less than 6% of its budget in cybersecurity.

Putting money where it belongs

Organizations are required to invest their money in the cyber security of their organization. They need to adopt cyber-security measures that are capable to protect sensitive data and information from cyber-attackers. Managed security services such as Penetration Testing, help organizations in patching loopholes that might give attackers an access to the system.

Employee Awareness

It has been discovered that 90% of the cyber-attacks take place due to employee negligence. Cyber -attacks like Phishing and Ransomware are deployed through emails. A single click can destroy the entire organization. It is therefore, extremely important to conduct training programs for employees that can help them understand the methodology of such attacks.

Restricting the access

Organizations should limit employee access across different levels of the network. This will limit the risk exposure towards probable cyber-attacks.

Securing the ‘smart’ devices

Many medical equipment is based on ‘IoT’ technology. It is therefore, extremely important to secure these devices. IoT devices security testing helps in minimizing the vulnerabilities that might damage the entire infrastructure of the organization.

The world is changing every second. ‘Older’ decays and ‘new’ blooms. That’s how nature works. It is important to shed the older methods that have proven to be ineffective in the long run.

Govt Sets Up Unit to Select Healthcare Startups' Tech that Reduce Imported Tech Dependency

Last year in September, India's central government launched National Health Protection Scheme or Ayushman Bharat-Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojna (AB-PMJAY), which is is touted as the 'world's largest government funded healthcare programme' aimed at targeting over 50 crore beneficiaries. In a latest to this, the National Health Authority (NHA), the implementing body for the AB-PMJAY, has set up a unit to promote innovations that reduce dependence on imported technologies to make quality health care affordable.

The NHA "innovation unit", which comprises a 4-member team, will carefully shortlist and select applications from start-ups, including organisations and individuals, offering technologies that lower cost and reduce dependency on imported technologies, which are costly.

The four members of the innovation unit will then refer the selected innovations to the government departments concerned for expert opinion. The NHA will take a call on whether to accept the proposal on the basis of feedback it receives from departments concerned.

Dinesh Arora, who is Deputy CEO of AB-PMJAY, said, "Lot of start-ups offer affordable health care by innovating on expensive technologies that exist. Many have approached us with proposals to develop cost-effective machines, gadgets, diagnostic kits, data privacy technology etc to bring down the cost significantly."

"There is a greater need to cultivate a landscape of synergies fixated on innovations centred on the Indian health care system to constantly evolve and deliver better outcomes through PMJAY… Thus, for focusing efforts in building an ecosystem geared towards accelerating innovations and facilitating partnerships with the external stakeholders’ present in the health care sector, a National Health Authority Innovation Unit is being established,” reads the NHA the order"

It may also be recalled that in March 2017, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) had moved a cabinet note and suggestion that the maximum age for classifying a biotechnology or a medical devices firm as a startup be raised to 8-10 years from the current 5 years [Read Here].

Later in May of same year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi invited startups to focus on research for innovative medical devices and use technology to make healthcare more affordable and said that "India should manufacture its own medical devices to bring down the cost. Recently, the government reduced cost of stents by 85%."

In April last year, the Government and the World Bank signed a $125 million loan agreement to support India in developing an innovative biopharmaceutical and medical devices industry.

Source - Hindustan Times

IIT Mandi and US-based RxDataScience Tie-up to Create Portal Documenting AI & ML Research in Pharma Sector

Premier tech institute Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Mandi located in Himachal Pradesh, has join hands with RxDataScience Inc, a US-based healthcare-focussed big data analytics software firm, to create a portal documentation Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) research in the pharmaceutical sector.

A team of IIT Mandi will also work closely with RxDataScience Inc, to apply deep-learning methods and cognitive algorithms for discovering patterns among patient journeys and social ties among physicians. This is part of a long-term collaboration focused on performing machine-learning on healthcare datasets concerning patients and physicians and developing novel web-based visualizations.

“Data Sciences in India are at a very nascent stage yet but in the US, most healthcare and pharmaceutical companies have moved onto the consulting stage wherein live cases are debated online by the doctors and medical practitioners’ community," said Prof. Varun Dutt, assistant professor, school of computing and electrical engineering, IIT Mandi, while explaining the importance of collaboration with RxDataScience.

India is at the helm of a healthcare boom given that the Government of India has hiked in health spending by 11 per cent with a gross budgetary allocation of Rs. 1,200 crores for opening more hospitals.

"State-of-the-art infrastructure on ground can help only when off ground data science evolves and put the registers and medical charts online up for discussion with other doctors. IIT Mandi is pleased to work with such a nodal agency in the healthcare sector the world over and this puts India on the world map of healthcare mapping online," said Prof. Dutt further.

Expressing happiness at this collaboration, Mr. Larry Pickett, Chief Executive Officer, RxDataScience Inc., said, “The RxDataScience and IIT Mandi research collaboration has been extremely productive in generating innovative new algorithms and visualization tools using the latest AI and machine learning approaches applied to longitudinal patient data. Both patients and our biopharma clients benefit from insights generated using novel approaches with cognitive and decision sciences applied to patient finding, patient journey and other complex use cases. We are excited to continue our long-term partnership with Dr. Varun Dutt and the PhD and undergraduate students at IIT Mandi.”

A good number of pharmaceutical giants across the world are eyeing India to tap the vast number of patients' records and data, which can be mined through AI, ML for predictive analysis. American pharmaceutical conglomerate Pfizer and FITT (Foundation of Innovation and Technology Transfer) at IIT-Delhi, have already joined hands for Pfizer IIT Delhi Innovation and IP Program (PIDIIP), designed to provide funding, resources, expertise and infrastructure to healthcare startups and Individual innovators across India

To recall, in April this year, Swiss multinational healthcare firm Roche too announced that it is looking for startups in India that will help the company bring evidence-based medicine in India through its proprietary technology.

To recall, tech giant Google is also working on an AI-driven tool called 'Google Brain', in which it has developed a data processing pipeline for transforming electronic health record (EHR) files into a standardized format. Moreover, very recently an undergraduate from IIT, Kanpur, made India proud by bagging the fellowship of Google Brain.

Via - Pharmabiz.com

[Top Image - RxDataScience.com]

Save Your Health Ties Up With HyperDoc to Revolutionise the Healthcare Industry in South Africa

Save Your Health that owned and operated by RedInno, a fastest growing healthcare platform based out of Jaipur, has entered into joint venture with HyperDoc, a healthcare platform based out of Pretoria, South Africa.

HyperDoc aims to make the discovery of doctors and healthcare facilities around one’s community as simple as a click of a button by developing a web and mobile platform that makes it easy for people to discover and book appointments with doctors and hospitals of their choice. The company aims to offer booking services and other extras like an online check-ins so you don’t have to arrive for your doctor appointment 20 minutes early.
Under the partnership, Save Your Health will have 50 % stake in the joint venture and HyperDoc will own 50 %, RedInno said in a statement.

The two companies will focus on revolutionising the fragmented healthcare classified industry in South Africa by empowering customers as well as healthcare service providers with new age tools and technology.

Thulani Samuel Skosana, CEO of HyperDoc said, “The idea for HYPERDOC was born with the intention of enabling patients to view doctor’s open appointment times and book instantly online using one’s mobile phones or computers. And to find doctors based on speciality, location or insurance providers. Users will be able to make informed decisions about choosing their doctor based on reviews of their profiles.”

Rakesh Kumar, CEO of Save Your Health said, “Save Your Health also started a healthcare platform for the emerging markets of Ghana, Brazil, Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia.”

In August 2016, the Save Your Health has incubated by the Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship at IIM Ahmedabad, and Startup Oasis, a Jaipur-based incubation center set up at the joint initiative of RIICO, Rajasthan’s premiere industrial promotion organization.

Rakesh Kumar, CEO of Save Your Health also said, “Our Vision is to be a $ 1 Crore venture by 2017 end.”