Cisco ties up with Narayana Health for remote services

Global telecom networking major Cisco Ltd has announced a tie-up with Bengaluru-based Narayana Health (NH), a multi-speciality tertiary level healthcare service provider, to deliver affordable specialty healthcare services remotely using Cisco's Virtual Expertise Digital Solution.

According to Dinesh Malkani, president, India and Saarc, Cisco, the association will enable NH to offer diagnostic services for various specialties at a cost that's affordable with a high-quality experience in the areas of neurology, nephrology, oncology and cardiology to patients remotely in various parts of the country.

Cisco will also implement modifications to hospital infrastructure enabling healthcare delivery at district centres and multi-specialty hospitals of the NH group across the country, creating a truly mobile and digital hospital experience.

Together both companies will set up advanced telemedicine solutions across three centres in India - Sirsi and Bellary in Karnataka and Rajarhat in Bengal via the main centre in Bangalore.

''Our association with Cisco will help Narayana Health to move closer to realize its vision of becoming a digital hospital and deliver advanced specialized healthcare to both rural as well as urban populations,'' said Dr Devi Shetty, chairman, Narayana Health.

With this initiative, Cisco is trying to join the rush for remote specialised healthcare, as its digital solutions help connect patients virtually with NH specialists, regardless of the distance.

Cisco's solution brings together voice, video and data to wherever patients are located and also enables a detailed clinical examination and review of all investigations in a seamless manner with the option of recording the entire interaction.

Digital learning
For Cisco, digitization is not confined to the area of healthcare. The company is also promoting digital learning using virtual digital classrooms through Cisco's Connected Learning solutions.

Earlier this week, it announced a partnership with the government of Rajasthan to enable digital learning for teachers in the state. This initiative aims to enhance the quality of education through digital learning for academia to connect, collaborate, create, and share content across the 12 centres of state institute for education management and training (SIEMAT) in Rajasthan.

Under this association, Cisco and SIEMAT have committed to 50,000 man-hours of training annually through its virtual digital classrooms.

Additionally, Cisco has also been investing in setting up network academies to train students on networking skills, security skills, internet of things (IoT) skills - all the skills required to participate in a digital economy. ''If you want digital India to become a reality, then skills is going to be very important. So far we have trained 80,000-100,000 students in India and 95 per cent of these have got very good jobs. But our goal is to train 250,000 students over the next 3-5 years,'' said Malkani.

Malkani and his team are working not only with governments to digitise India but are offering digital solutions to other industries like banking, telecom and manufacturing.

For instance, they have been aggressively working with the Bandhan bank and IDFC providing digital end-to-end solutions and they have partnered with Mahindra & Mahindra to create a world-class, IoT-based, fully digital factory for them. ''Digitization is across the board, it's not only about government; that is one part of it. It's really a combination of what is happening in banking, education, e-commerce, manufacturing, telcos. So a lot of our focus is also on software solutions and that is the work we have been doing. So digitization is touching everybody and it will touch more and more.''

As the drive towards digitization remains a strong pillar for Cisco, the company also plans to ramp up investment in IoT which Malkani believes is a game-changer and in the area of cybersecurity. The company plans to launch a state-of-the-art centre of excellence in Delhi where they will train enterprises and government on how to handle cyber security issues. The centre will be launched later this year.