My fortnightly column, A Dose of IT that discusses the digital opportunity in integrative medicine in India Kapil Khandelwal QuoteUnquote with KK www.kapilkhandelwal.com

1. c m y k c m y k
Bengaluru ●● Monday ●● 25 January 2010
Motorola has
accused RIM
of infringing
on five of its
patents.
13
Technomics
Twitter has cut
down on a
feature on its
website over a
security flaw.
Google’s
founders plan
to sell 10
million shares
over five years.
DDCC
IM beckons
ICT vendors
Kapil Khandelwal
T
he buzzword, and
the bet these days
is on Integrative
Medicine (IM). Both
doctors and patients are
bonding with the philoso-
phy of the “whole-per-
son” approach, which is
designed to treat the per-
son, and not just the dis-
ease.
While some of the ther-
apies used may be non-
conventional, a guiding
principle within IM is to
use therapies that have
some high-quality evi-
dence to support them.
Many large academic
centers in the US and
Europe have now enabled
research, education, and
training. Many associa-
tions in the US are pro-
moting it aggressively as
well.
India has been the birth-
place of traditional reme-
dies such as the Ayurve-
da, Yoga, Naturopathy,
Unani, Siddha, and
Homeopathy, which
some IM practitioners in
the West have now dived
into. Pioneering efforts
are on at the Institute of
Ayurveda and Integrative
Medicine (IAIM), as
well. IAIM has amassed
a body of knowledge of
local phytomedicines,
traditional medicine and
their practice in local
Indian communities.
The domestic potential
for IM is an incremental
INR 8,000 crore and is
growing at a rate of 20 to
25 per cent per annum.
Internationally, it is
expected to be a multi-$
100 billion industry.
However, one of the
issues hindering growth
and wider acceptance of
IM is the validation of the
treatment outcomes and
perception around well-
ness rather than being
curative centric.
ICT solutions would
definitely be one of the
ways forward to ensure
that the Indian traditional
medicines are validated
and gain global accept-
ability beyond the best-
sellers or self-health
cookbooks.
Areas where ICT solu-
tions can play a part
include discovery and
research of newer ail-
ments, research training
and career development
in IM, and in enabling
outreach with other tradi-
tional medicine practi-
tioners.
ICT would have to
operate like an informa-
tion clearinghouse to
answer inquiries and
requests for information;
it has to enable integra-
tion of clinical practices
by all parties delivering
care under IM by provid-
ing evidence-based and
scientifically proven
informatics. There will
be an exponential growth
of informatics in IM in
the future and thereby an
associated need to struc-
ture and organise this
knowledge.
Unfortunately, there are
not many proven com-
mercial-off-the-shelf
solutions for IM globally.
This is a huge opportuni-
ty for ICT vendors in
India — create solutions
locally and take them
global.
Kapil Khandelwal is a leading healthcare and
ICT expert. Kapil@KapilKhandelwal.com
A dose
of IT
A dose
of IT MS searching: Killer mobile apps
GOUTAM DAS
BENGALURU
Jan. 24: “Hear who else is
here and introduce your-
self”.
The placard was loud and
clear, and stood out promi-
nently in a crowded room
filled with dazzling displays
of futuristic science.
The recently concluded
Microsoft Research India’s
‘Techvista’, the organisa-
tion’s annual research sym-
posium, had it all — the
fathers of computing, sooth-
sayers who predicted cars
can drive itself in 15 years,
and skeptical professors
who feared automated war-
fare in the future.
The gathering also had
more do-able ideas being
presented, many of them
around cell phones.
One was ‘Audio Wiki’, a
Massachusetts Inst. of Tech-
nology (MIT) project that is
being deployed by
Microsoft Research.
The project, as the name
gives away, envisions an
audio Wikipedia, or a plat-
form to create, manage, and
listen to audio content from
the mobile phone.
The project was piloted
with protesting farmers in
Bengaluru recently — they
all dialed a number from a
cell phone to leave their
message. All these could be
accessed by dialing in to the
“radio station”, or forward-
ed to the government.
“Can we get farmers a
voice?” asks Latif Alam, an
under grad student from
MIT’s Computer Science
Artificial Intelligence Lab.
“Now what has been possi-
ble over the Internet is do-
able over the mobile phone,”
he says.
Evidently, the project has a
developing world bias. The
Internet requires one to be
not just literate but computer
and Web literate. And very
few in India, for instance,
are online — depending on
which research you look at,
numbers for Internet pene-
tration could vary between
36 million and 80 million. A
tiny number considering this
is a land of a billion plus
people.
An Audio Wiki, which
requires just a cell phone
and minimum literacy,
becomes an interesting
product.
“In this work, we aim to
lower the barrier to sharing
local information via the
Audio Wiki, a repository of
spoken content that can be
accessed and modified via a
low-cost telephone,” an MIT
paper on the project
explains. “Because content
is in purely audio form —
from entry to playback —
the system is accessible to
the illiterate and naturally
supports any local language.
By enabling poor and illiter-
ate users to create local
stores of information, we
envision broad applications
in agriculture, health, gov-
ernment, and entrepreneur-
ship.”
The system is based on a
central server which is inter-
faced with a speech recogni-
tion engine, an information
storage database, and an
audio recording and play-
back system. Besides
uploading and listening to
content created, one can also
edit it as well.
Another mobile project,
from Microsoft Research’s
Redmond centre, explored
the idea of using a phone
call as permission for shar-
ing of files and data such as
photographs.
“I can share a map of the
location and photos during a
call, for instance,”
researcher AJ Brush
explained to a group of curi-
ous onlookers at the sympo-
sium. “It is a social sense of
security — I know who I am
sharing with because I am
talking. When the call ends,
the sharing stops.”
Named Newport, the proj-
ect envisages a scenario
where one can transfer data
through Bluetooth to a com-
puter, which can use its con-
nection to the Internet to put
the file up in a storage cloud.
The person at the other end
of the call can then down-
load it.
The power of mobile
phones is also being
explored by Microsoft
Research India where a
project is dealing in traffic
congestion monitoring. It is
titled ‘Nericell’ — after a
Tamil word for congestion.
Microsoft Research India managing director Dr P Anandan says his organisation is exploring the future of computing, how computing can
change people’s lives and how India’s research ecosystem can be transformed. Leveraging the power of mobile phones to address problems is
a hot issue for MSR. Anandan spoke during the firm’s annual research symposium. — R Samuel
Microsoft
Research is
helping in the
deployment of
MIT’s ‘Audio
Wiki’ project,
which piloted
in Bengaluru
recently.
Anybody with
even a
low-cost
handset can
create local
stores of
information,
edit them, or
listen to it by
dialing a
specially
created ‘radio
station’.
MOTOKO RICH
NEW YORK
Jan. 24: Here’s a riddle:
How do you make your
book a best seller on the
Kindle?
Answer: Give copies away.
That’s right. More than
half of the “best-selling” e-
books on the Kindle, Ama-
zon.com’s e-reader, are
available at no charge.
Although some of the titles
are digital versions of books
in the public domain — like
Jane Austen’s “Pride and
Prejudice” — many are by
authors still trying to make a
living from their work.
Earlier this week, for
example, the No. 1 and 2
spots on Kindle’s best-seller
list were taken by “Cape
Refuge” and “Southern
Storm,” both novels by Terri
Blackstock, a writer of
Christian thrillers. The Kin-
dle price: $0. Until the end
of the month, Ms. Black-
stock’s publisher, Zonder-
van, a division of Harper-
Collins Publishers, is offer-
ing readers the opportunity
to download the books free
to the Kindle or to the Kin-
dle apps on their iPhone or
in Windows.
Publishers including Har-
lequin, Random House and
Scholastic are offering free
versions of digital books to
Amazon, Barnes & Noble
and other e-retailers, as well
as on author Web sites, as a
way of allowing readers to
try out the work of unfamil-
iar writers. The hope is that
customers who like what
they read will go on to
obtain another title for
money.
“Giving people a sample is
a great way to hook people
and encourage them to buy
more,” said Suzanne Mur-
phy, group publisher of
Scholastic Trade Publishing,
which offered free down-
loads of “Suite Scarlett,” a
young-adult novel by Mau-
reen Johnson, for three
weeks in the hopes of build-
ing buzz for the next book in
the series, “Scarlett Fever,”
out in hardcover on Feb. 1.
The book went as high as
No. 3 on Amazon’s Kindle
best-seller list.
The digital giveaways
come as publishers are pan-
icking about price pressure
on e-books in general. Ama-
zon and other online retail-
ers have set $9.99 as the
putative e-book price for
new releases and best sell-
ers, and publishers worry
that such pricing ultimately
creates expectations among
consumers that new books
are no longer worth, say,
$25 (the average list price of
a new hardcover), or even
$13 (a standard list price for
trade paperbacks).
Some publishers have tried
to take control of pricing by
delaying the publication of
certain e-books for several
months after the books are
made available in hardcover.
Executives at some houses
said that given such actions,
offering free content
amounts to industry
hypocrisy.
“At a time when we are
resisting the $9.99 price of
e-books,” said David Young,
chief executive of Hachette
Book Group, the publisher
of James Patterson and
Stephenie Meyer, “it is
illogical to give books away
for free.”
Similarly, a spokesman for
Penguin Group USA said:
“Penguin has not and does
not give away books for
free. We feel that the value
of the book is too important
to do that.”
But some publishers
regard free digital books as
purely promotional, in the
same vein as the free galleys
they distribute to book-
sellers and reviewers to cre-
ate attention and word-of-
mouth buzz for an author.
“Most people purchase
stuff because somebody has
recommended the title,” said
Steve Sammons, executive
vice president for consumer
engagement at Zondervan.
Neither Amazon nor other
e-book retailers make any
money on these giveaways
either. But it is a way of lur-
ing customers to their e-
reading devices.
Free e-books are also a
way of distinguishing a less-
well-known author from the
marketing juggernauts of
the most popular books.
“You have to show people
things because there’s a lot
of competition,” said Ms.
Johnson, the author of
“Suite Scarlett” and seven
other books. “If they go into
a store, they are going to see
4,000 books with Robert
Pattinson’s face on it,” she
added, referring to movie-
tie-in versions of Ms.
Meyer’s “Twilight” series.
“Then my book will be
buried under them.”
And if a free e-book rises
to the top of the Kindle best-
seller list — or Barnes &
Noble’s ranked list of free e-
books — it automatically
gives an author more visibil-
ity.
“When you push to No. 1
of any best-seller list, that in
itself seems to beget public-
ity,” said Brandilyn Collins,
who writes suspense novels
with Christian themes and
whose novels “Exposure”
and “Dark Pursuit” were
No. 1 and 2 on the Kindle
best-seller list earlier this
month and remain in the Top
10 (and are still available
free).
Most of the giveaways are
of older titles by an author,
with the idea that reading
them will convert new fans
who will go on to buy more
recently released books.
Even if only a small percent-
age of those who download
a free book end up buying
another one, “that’s all
found money,” said Steve
Oates, vice president for
marketing at Bethany House
Publishers, a unit of Baker
Publishing Group, whose
authors Beverly Lewis and
Tracie Peterson had free
titles on the Kindle best-
seller list this week.
With e-books still repre-
senting about 5 per cent of
the total book market, data
on the effect of digital give-
aways is still inconclusive,
nevertheless. — NYT
How to be a bestseller on Kindle
Maureen Johnson, a writer whose free e-book, Suite Scarlett, went as high as No. 3
on Amazon’s Kindle best-seller list.