Arjunsooraj V, CEO, AKAS MedicalAKAS Medical has launched a Quick Vital sign machine, which is totally innovative and used in the OPD for every clinic. It can screen seven parameters for all OPD patients in two minutes, says Arjunsooraj V, CEO, AKAS Medical, in conversation with Elets News Network (ENN).

Akas medical has been providing critical care to patients since 1996, how has been the journey so far?

Customer acceptance of our Infusion pump (therapeutic product) was initially a big challenge and over time customers learnt that Indians could manufacture good products. The challenge has been from all quarters. For example, the import duty of infusion pumps was lower than the parts of the infusion pump. So when we import a battery or a motor to manufacture a pump, the import duty and CVD were all higher than the duties for importing an infusion pump. So this was going against the Make In India about 10 to 15 years back.

Other Challenges we had were reaching out to customers through dealers, giving the service support promptly while having just a few installations in a place. We overcame all this with time. Now we have a full-fledged company appointed service engineers across every place. From one product that we manufactured way back in 1996, the volumetric infusion pump, then we launched our Syringe infusion pump. Subsequently, we forayed into LCD Vision chart for ophthalmology. We launched our pulse oximeters and patient monitors. On the whole, the journey has been growing with challenges.

What innovative products have been introduced by you in the critical care division?

We observed that temperature is a parameter which is not used much in the patient monitors. Probably, number of probes and wires running on the patients were uncomfortable. So, we have offered the non-contact temperature in our Patient Monitor. Nursing staff monitor the temperature, once in 4 hours or 6 hours. They can very well use the Non Contact method in our monitor which can record and provide the trend.

We have launched a Quick Vital sign machine, which is totally innovative and used in the OPD for every clinic. It can screen 7 parameters for all OPD patients in 2 mins. Height, Weight, BMI, Temperature, Spo2%, Pulse Rate and NIBP (oscillometric and manual mode). This gives a print out of the recorded data all in 2 minutes.

We have launched Drip Sure, a low-cost alternative for a volumetric infusion pump for non-ICU areas or in the general wards for plain saline. Maintaining the IV flow rate is a time consume task for the Nurses and this product a gravity-based infusion controller controls the flow rate precisely to the set drops/min. This product can be used in every bed and will save the time for Nursing staff. For a developed nation where patients can afford volumetric pumps are used. But for a developing nation like India, we run without pumps and hence this product could help.

More innovative products are still in R&D which I will not be able to share at this point in time.

IN 2018 WE ARE LOOKING AT A PROMISING GROWTH AS WE HAVE STARTED PLAYING IN BIGGER MARKET SIZE. WE HAVE ALSO INCREASED OUR SERVICE SUPPORT CENTRES IN VARIOUS GEOGRAPHIES TO GIVE QUICKER SERVICE.

Give us an overview of your overseas initiatives.

Our products are CE certified. Opthalmology products are FDA certified as well. We are currently catering to only a few customers and distributors globally. Those distributors who have approached us by themselves are only serviced. We have not started our overseas operations for want of innovative products. With the Quick vital sign and Drip Sure, we are taking up the global market from 2018.

How has been the last year and what we are likely to witness in 2018 for AKAS Medical?

Last year, we have launched three major products Quick Vital Sign, Drip Sure and Patient Monitor with Non-Contact Temperature and wireless central monitor. We have bagged various government big orders in Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, West Bengal, AIIMS, PGI Chandigarh and many others.

We have launched mobile Application to improve customer service. We take customer feedback through an application and constantly improve our products and services.

Having launched three important products last year, all these are taking off in the last few months of 2017. This 2018 we are looking at a promising growth as we have started playing in bigger market size. We have also increased our service support centres in various geographies to give quick service. The GST is also a welcome move as it allows dealers to take credit for the taxes and also have a uniform taxation across the country. All this in place, we are seeing the promising year 2018.

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