Hyderabad ready to export ventilators: IT secy

HYDERABAD: With a lot of innovation around ventilators happening in Hyderabad, the city might soon be exporting ventilators as against scrambling to import ventilators at the beginning of the pandemic, said Jayesh Ranjan, principal secretary, IT and industries department.
He was speaking at the launch of the Leven Medical’s line of ventilators which unveiled three of its models - C5 Covid-19 ventilator, ICU ventilator and Smart Ventilator - on Sunday.
Elaborating how there was a scramble among states in the beginning of the pandemic to import ventilators, primarily from China, priced at ?5 lakh each, the official said that indigenous innovation has resulted in a ten-fold decrease in prices.
“While there are other companies, including defence companies which started manufacturing during the pandemic, we are now actually in a position to export our ‘Make in India’ products and these are equally good, equally functional and have all the price advantages. While many entrepreneurs and institutions have stepped in to fill the gap but in terms of intelligent ventilators, this is affordable. The basic version is available at around ?75,000,” the official said.
Speaking about the innovation by Leven Medical, which is mentored by the Hyderabad Security Cluster HSC (an initiative of the state government), the official added, “While others are just ventilatory support helping to breathe better, the advantage of these ventilators is besides respiratory support, it also gives insights to doctors and medical staff to make informed decisions,” he said.
“Since we have a very strong grounding in cyber security there is also sufficient safeguards and protection in how this data is stored and who is authorized to use this data. It might even provide insights into the National Digital Health Mission,” he added.
Speaking about the motivation behind the innovation, Zaki Qureshey, founding father and CEO of HSC, founder and CEO, Leven Medical said that it was the heartwrenching stories of human tragedy that compelled the team to add features to allow remote monitoring etc.
“For instance when we saw that doctors and medical professionals were few in number and hesitant to go near critical patients, we thought of adding a remote monitoring feature into the machine. Then we added a tracking software to allow contact tracing and monitoring of patients. The product has developed and integrated 10 different functions into the system,” Qureshey said.