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Tata Elxsi Strikes a Deal with Narayana Hruduyalaya
To jointly develop affordable and efficient healthcare
devices
Dr Devi Shetty |
Tata Elxsi Limited and Narayana Hrudayalaya, Bangaluru, have
signed a MoU to mark their strategic alliance to develop affordable, high quality
healthcare solutions. The partnership brings together Tata Elxsi's technology
and design expertise and Narayana Hrudayalaya's domain knowledge to develop
medical devices for the mass market that will drastically reduce the cost of
procedures and thus make healthcare solutions more accessible and affordable
for general public.
While Tata Elxsi, through its industrial design division, IDE, will undertake
the entire design and development work of the devices, Narayana Hrudayalaya
will provide support for problem identification, domain knowledge and clinical
trials. IDE provides complete brand and product development services across
industries: FMCG, transportation, consumer electronics & appliances, digital
user experience and healthcare.
The partnership will develop devices through innovation, value engineering and
new technologies to create simple, effective and economical healthcare tools
and techniques which can be used by doctors in the key areas of healthcare.
Tata Elxsi's experience in working on devices for India and emerging markets
will further ensure that these objectives are judiciously met.
Said Madhukar Dev, MD, Tata Elxsi, "We are very happy to collaborate with
Narayana Hrudayalaya in the area of healthcare devices. While Narayana Hrudayalaya
has been pioneering affordable and innovative health services in the country,
Tata Elxsi's strength lies in developing innovative devices by internalising
the environmental sensibilities of the healthcare industry and creating intuitive
solutions that are both cost-effective and robust. This partnership will indeed
aim at making a substantial difference for both, the doctors using the devices
and patients who are paying for the treatment."
The development of medical devices that are used today in various treatments
have a prolonged development cycle as they need to be clinically tested and
certified before they can be used on patients. Moreover, for devices to become
viable they have to address key parameters of cost, functionality and availability.
It becomes critical to understand these challenges and channelise all efforts
to optimise the development cycle, which if achieved can make a huge difference
in the healthcare system in India and the other developing countries. It is
therefore important for extensive research and development to be undertaken
by corporates to speed up the pace of development.
"We have over the years tried to balance the availability of world-class
treatment facilities with our efforts to help people who today can't dream of
leading a normal life because of the high cost of treatment. We are therefore
always looking at new avenues to make this available and we feel this partnership
with Tata Elxsi which has the experience and knowhow having worked on such projects
before, will be a step in that direction. We can therefore leverage each other's
expertise and knowledge to work towards a common goal of quicker and better
healthcare solutions for people, not just in India but around the world,"
said Dr Devi Shetty, MD and Chairman, Narayana Hrudayalaya.
To sum up the partnership, Rajesh Shelke, Senior Design Manager, Healthcare
Domain, IDE, Tata Elxsi, said, "The field of healthcare devices has not
been explored to its potential and the impact it has made has been restricted.
The challenge that lies ahead is as to how to make these devices accessible
and cost-effective for developing countries like India with its limited healthcare
system where these devices can indeed be a life-saver."
EH News Bureau
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