Inasra July 28, 2007
Posted by Aparna T in : Travel , 1 comment so farInasra was one of the participants at Proto.in 2007, the startup showcase event that we’ve reviewed earlier. Inasra is interesting, as the first one that seems to focus on the India accommodation category, among a large number of travel startups focusing on air tickets or holiday packages.
They have affiliations to 3500 hotels in 400 Indian cities, an easy-to-use website, and all the usual features - search by city and dates of travel, budget, plus a variety of hotel amenities, listing of room rates for different room types, and credit card payment processing. I haven’t found too many sites that list anything below a 3-star hotel, so it’s nice to find some budget hotels here. It works well for large/medium cities or tourist
destinations, though the number of hotels listed for some smaller towns is a lot fewer, and not cheap. Inasra helpfully finds rates and contact info for hotels not affiliated with itself, so that the traveler can book it himself.
Inasra’s Minimum Advance charge on reservation confirmation is non-refundable. This information needs to be a clearly visible Cancellations/Refund Policy link at the top, as is standard among travel sites,
not buried in a small Terms and Conditions link at the bottom of the page.
The other area where improvement is needed is the limited phone support - not available on Sundays, and after 8 pm on other days. One can’t expect a customer who may arrive at a hotel at 9pm on Friday and find the hotel doesn’t have his reservation, to wait till the following Monday 10am to sort it out.
TeleDoc.org July 8, 2007
Posted by Pallav Sharda in : Healthcare, Non-Profit, Technology , add a commentTeleDoc is a project of Jiva Institute, an India-based non-profit research and development organization that aims to foster sustainable development by producing innovations. Launched as a pilot project in 15 villages in Haryana in April 2003, TeleDoc provides handheld mobile phone devices to village-based health workers in India, permitting them to communicate with doctors remotely.
TeleDoc uses java-enabled mobile telephones to provide real-time ability to record and transmit diagnostic information that doctors can analyze and then prescribe medication and treatment. At a regional office, medicines are prepared and picked up by field workers, and delivered to patients in their homes through a network of pharmacies and delivery personnel. The approximate cost of this entire process is 70 rupees (US$1.50) per consultation, which is pretty impressive.
TeleDoc won the World Summit Award for eHealth in 2003 at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva, Switzerland. Jiva is an organization based out of Faridabad (Haryana) promoting Ayurveda techniques.
In my view, TeleDoc signifies yet another indigenous IT solution to healthcare issues in India. There are plenty of such isolated efforts in existence today (just read about Andhra Pradesh and TamilNadu government’s Disease Surveillance Solution implemented by Voxiva) and hopefully will be the agents of change.
HISPIndia.org July 8, 2007
Posted by Pallav Sharda in : Healthcare, Non-Profit, Technology , comments closedHISPIndia.org is a not-for-profit organization that supports design, development and implementation of Public Health Information Systems in India. The team behind it comes from University of Oslo (Norway), SCTIMST (Kerala), IIITM (Kerala).
Health Information System Project (HISP) activities started in India in 2000, and the resultant software (DHIS- District Health Information Software) software was deployed in the state of Andhra Pradesh. As the project grew, it led to formation of HISPIndia as an NGO in 2003. Today, HISPIndia has about 35 full-time staff and is active in Kerala, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, and soon in Karnataka.
HISP projects are also being run in other developing countries- Ethiopia, South Africa, Mozambique, Tanzania , Botswana, Malawi, Nigeria, Zambia and Vietnam. As a ‘network’, HISP aims to strengthen open source health software, share best practices and deploy the technology working directly with health services of each country. Masters and doctoral students from University of Oslo leverage HISP for research activities. If you are into Healthcare IT, check out their software resources section and wiki.
innINDIA July 7, 2007
Posted by Pallav Sharda in : Travel , add a commentinnINDIA plans to be a horizontal portal aggregating information and services for India. It’s not there in terms of content, but I’m not going to pound on them because they are one of the few Indian sites that have put up a “Beta” sign.
The layout for website still seems to be shaping up- there is no good navigation through the various sections (once you clicked on ‘Indian Recipes’, no way to go back to homepage). Self-reported press releases claim health search engine launch, postal code search launch, etc. The overall business plan is unclear to me at this point, and no good indication as to what they aim to deliver to web customers. All in all, nothing worth looking into.