Tata Elxsi Ltd and Narayana Hrudayalaya have inked a pact to develop affordable, high quality healthcare solutions. The partnership brings together Tata Elxsi's technology and design expertise along with Narayana Hrudayalaya's domain knowledge to develop medical devices for the mass market which can help to bring down cost of surgical procedures.

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. 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.

"Our experience in working on devices for India and emerging markets will further ensure that these objectives are judiciously met," stated Madhukar Dev, managing director, Tata Elxsi, The company's strength lies in developing innovative devices, he added.

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 optimize the development cycle which, if achieved can make a huge difference in the healthcare system in India and other developing countries. It is therefore important for extensive research and development to be undertaken by corporates to speed up the pace of development.

"At Narayana Hrudayalaya, we believe the need of the hour is to create a viable platform for health care providers like us to share, learn, understand and extend the services to the needy. 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 quicker and better healthcare solutions for people, not just in India but around the world," stated Dr Devi Shetty, MD and chairman, Narayana Hrudayalaya said.

Rajesh Shelke, senior design manager, Healthcare Domain, IDE, Tata Elxsi said, "The field of healthcare devices has not been explored to its potential. The challenge is 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."