TCS enters medical devices segment

Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) is foraying into the medical equipment segment in India, estimated to be over $1.5 billion, with the development of a patient monitoring system. The global software major, along with IIT Mumbai, is developing a wearable electro cardio-graph (ECG) monitoring system.

The Embedded Systems Research Group of TCS is developing the ECG system named `Silicon Locket'. The portable device can record, store and download the ECG signals of patients onto a personal computer, sources close to the development told Business Standard.

This would be the country's first indigenously developed patient-monitoring system, which utilises signal processing techniques to detect conditions such as Arrythmia (abnormality of the heart beat) in real-time.

The beta testing of the product has been completed, while tests for conformity of safety standards are currently under way, they said. The product would be "aggressively priced", to facilitate an early adoption, than similar products that are being imported into the Indian market. The imported products are priced at around Rs one lakh.

If successful, TCS would roll out upgraded versions of the product that can send diagnostic alerts to a hospital or a doctor through a mobile phone interface.

Earlier, TCS has ventures into bioinformatics by developing software solutions for genome sequencing and comparative genomics. The company also developed India's first `Biosuite', a software tool for drug discovery in association with Council of Scientific and Industrial Research.