A few days ago, I was buying vegetables from a neighbourhood shopkeeper. Generally this department is left to the able hands of my wife, but this time she was away and I had the responsibility of keeping things going at home.
 
And so I started shopping, one Saturday morning, and decided to avoid the pain of doing it too often by stocking up for a week or maybe more. And when the subzi wala  started totaling, I nonchalantly took out a 100 Rupee note and handed it over to him.
 
The subzi wala, a portly youngster with a humorous disposition, looked at the proffered note and said with a straight face:
 
“Sir, I don’t want tips.  “
 
“Tips? No, no, just take the total bill amount and return the rest!” I told him.
 
He started laughing, and said:
 
“Looks like you are shopping for veggies after a long time. The total bill comes to four hundred and sixty two Rupees.”
 
I nearly collapsed.  Then I...

India-based Emergency Health Services organization, set up in 2005, with the objective to create an integrated institution providing ambulance facilities, trained paramedics, and access to free hospital care accessible through phone.

Today the non-profit organization operates as one of the fastest, most comprehensive emergency response systems in India, providing not only medical emergency response but also police and fire services under one roof. Its state-of-the-art campus houses sophisticated call centers, medical personnel who provide telephone guidance to emergency responders in the field, support staff along with research and training facilities.

A public - private initiative driven in association with the Government of Andhra Pradesh, the organization has 802 hospitals in its network committed to free, short term emergency care. To avail the service, the 108 number has to be dialed and the right services are delivered in the least...

A few years ago, residents of some 200 villages in the rural areas of Andhra Pradesh, a state in southern India, would have been very lucky if they had a full-time medical practitioner available. Conversely, now they just have to visit a rural clinic where, by using probes and equipments conduct EKGs which is transferred to a specialty cardiology hospital located 600 miles away in Bangalore. Within 15 minutes, cardiologists from the specialty hospital provide analysis and treatment plans for the ailment.

Working with an NGO, Mahindra Satyam provided the overall Tele-Health framework to build Tele-EKG solutions that linked nearly 50 rural health clinics to Cardiac Center of Excellence at the Bangalore-based hospital. The framework provided the software, hardware selection as well as implementation approach as a turnkey model.

A Tele-EKG application package was installed with interfaces to Schiller EKG equipment. The solution...