Data Revolution in Healthcare and Lifesciences Industry

“Zika had 'disappeared' because it wasn’t worth worrying about and people weren’t paying attention.” Zika virus was first identified in 1947 in a sentinel monkey that was being used to monitor for the presence of yellow fever virus in the Zika Forest of Uganda. At this time cell lines were not available for studying viruses, so serum from the febrile monkey was inoculated intra-cerebrally into mice. All the mice became sick, and the virus isolated from their brains was called Zika virus. The same virus was subsequently isolated from Aedes africanus mosquitoes in the Zika forest. In 1950, when some serological studies were being done, it was found that we humans developed antibodies against this virus. Further studies revealed evidence of infection in other African countries, including Uganda, Tanzania, Egypt, Central African Republic, Sierra Leone, and Gabon, as well as Asia (India, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia). The virus circulating in Brazil is ...

No. 1- Lyme bacteria use the same technique as White Blood Cells to navigate and move in blood vessels In an interesting case of convergent evolution Lyme bacteria use the same technique as White Blood Cells to navigate and move in blood vessels.To zip through the bloodstream and spread infection throughout the body, the bacteria that cause Lyme disease take a cue from the white blood cells trying to attack them. Both use specialized bonds to stick to the cells lining blood vessels and move along at their own pace, biologist Tara Moriarty and colleagues report September 6 in Cell Reports. “It’s really an amazing case of convergent evolution,” says Wendy Thomas, a biologist at the University of Washington in Seattle who wasn’t part of the study. “There’s little structural similarity between the molecules involved in these behaviors, and yet their behavior is the same.” No.2- Wearable Robot for people who lost their hand function This wearable robot helps disabled patients re...

Yes this post of mine is not around Healthcare Marketing, Digital Innovation or Community Health programs . I thought to write about this particular topic after studying trends related to people's ill health and the food we eat, the cosmetics we use and the bad additives that have done enough bad to us already. I remember those times when my Grandma used to mix Glycerine with rose water and it used to be our skin care staple for winters. Dry some Indian gooseberry and heat it up with home made coconut oil to get luscious locks. Things were simple, fresh and homemade. Now Grandma is long gone and we are buying such products off the shelf knowing little about additives like mineral oil, LLP (Light Liquid Paraffin Oil ), perfumery compounds, preservatives and what not.People who have no connect to the cosmetics and food industry know very little about such compounds and need to be educated. For them a good brand name like Bajaj, Dabur or Patanjali serves the purpose. However...

Innovations in Healthcare (founded as the International Partnership for Innovative Healthcare Delivery) is a nonprofit organization hosted by Duke University and founded in 2011 by Duke Health, McKinsey & Company, and the World Economic Forum. I am an IPIHD innovator myself and the learnings I had not only assessing my own innovations but engaging with other innovators is impeccable. At the heart of Innovations in Healthcare is our network of 60+ innovators from around the world working to expand access to affordable, quality healthcare. Every year, IPIHD identifies and recruit entrepreneurs with promising models of healthcare to apply to join their network as innovators. Through a highly competitive process, they then select the best organizations to join them. They help connect these innovators with opportunities, information, and contacts they need to scale up their work. Nominations are open and the deadline is 16th September 2016. Do you know an organization that wants...

You may have come across sayings such as, “Nothing is permanent but Change.” Also a few others would say, “If Change was permanent, it would have stayed”. We evolve and so does our needs and priorities and in the Indian market it makes so much more sense because as a nation we yearn for access, empowerment and rights. Recently, growing attention has been devoted to the concept of “Open Innovation”, both in academia as well as in practice. Open innovation is “the use of purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation, and expand the markets for external use of innovation, respectively.” The concept has emerged from the belief that growth just like innovation has to be inclusive. Recently, I was at the GE Edison Challenge venue in Bangalore, India where GE invited college/university students to showcase promising innovations that can aid in achieving these goals by a digital-physical solution across industries. The audience and mentor group came fr...

The healthcare industry is currently experiencing change at an unprecedented rate. Change is not only occurring in the technology used in diagnostics and care delivery, but this change is so fundamental that it could, and likely will, fundamentally alter the business model of the industry. Today we have fitness bands, healthcare apps, appointment schedulers, health chats and several such means to access healthcare but one thing that all of this does not necessarily correlate with high quality of care or better outcomes. We need to understand that “Not even a Ferrari will get us to our destination without a driver.” Formula of Driver: Driver = (Need + Incentive) where; Incentive = (Value + Reward) Need = (Gap + Demand) To define the best drivers, we need to first address the need. Need might not make economic or business sense but it is the best opportunity to leave an impact. No one remembers how much business a “Mughal-e-Azam” or “Usual suspects” did but ever...