BREAKING: From 47,000 per year to 200,000 a day, India’s PPE production flies
India is managing a massive spike in the production of personal protection equipment (PPE) in the country following the outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic. From just 47,000 items being produced annually, the production has grown up to about two lakhs (a unit in the Indian numbering system equal to one hundred thousand) per day. Dr G Satheesh Reddy, the Defence Research and Development Organisation and Chairman (DRDO), said the pandemic has also provided a lot of opportunity for research and development and industrial production, but cautioned that deferrals in development are of no use.
The technological bet India is investing in is worth the world’s attention.
Also, Dr G Satheesh Reddy recently highlighted the ongoing updates and technological developing scientists and staff members at the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) in Mohali are working on.
Every update and conference take place via video conference, where directors and senior scientists from various laboratories of the Defence Research and Development Organisation participate and talk.
He also addressed the importance of medical ventilators production by the industry with assistance by DRDO, which were world-class products and also have huge export potential.
Dr Reddy said C-DAC, an autonomous body under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, will be considered as an “extended arm” of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) for undertaking high quality applied research.
He said that in today’s situation different organisations cannot function in silos and there were many areas in which both the establishments would work together.
Lauding the role of the Mohali centre in research and development in the electronics and information technology fields, he said artificial intelligence plays a key role and tools developed by it would be required in almost all fields.
Dr PK Khosla, the Director of C-DAC in Mohali, gave an overview of the work done in the organisation’s four verticals – healthcare technology, cybersecurity, e-governance and education and training. He also discussed four new areas that C-DAC is now focusing upon.
These include artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual, robotics and quantum computing. He said that several new projects have been initiated in these domains, revealing India’s full potential.
Indeed, C-DAC is a research and development organisation of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology engaged in consolidating national technological capabilities in the context of global developments and responding to change in the market needs. It has 11 centres across the country, including Mohali.
Director-General C-DAC, Dr Hemant Darbari, also revealed “eSanjeevani OPD”, a recently launched national level telemedicine project rolled out by C-DAC Mohali which is aimed at bringing medical care to people’s doorsteps in these times of lockdown.
The brand-new telemedicine has been extended to 15 states within three weeks and provides access to over a thousand doctors.
India has definitely found a win-win balance between the pandemic and the power of technology.
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