logo
Sudden cardiac death is often a 'perfect storm'. Here's what you should know

Sudden cardiac death is often a 'perfect storm'. Here's what you should know

Time of India21 hours ago
Sudden cardiac death is often a 'perfect storm'. Here's what you should know
Lata Mishra
TIMESOFINDIA.COM
Aug 7, 2025, 17:10 IST IST
A 26-year-old in Hyderabad collapsed while playing badminton and died minutes later. Top Hyderabad electrophysiologist Dr Kumar Narayanan explains why young Indians need to be more mindful of hidden heart defects, lifestyle stress and post-Covid damage. He warns that cardiac arrest symptoms are often missed until it's too late
India continues to witness a troubling series of sudden cardiac deaths among young adults, several of them have been caught on camera and widely shared online, triggering nationwide concern.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

AI and ABHA: How Eka Care digitised 110 million health records
AI and ABHA: How Eka Care digitised 110 million health records

Time of India

time39 minutes ago

  • Time of India

AI and ABHA: How Eka Care digitised 110 million health records

Live Events Bolstered by the COVID-19 pandemic and the Government's encouragement of the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) platform, Eka Care states they have grown to digitise over 110 million health records with more than 50 million platform users. Vikalp Sahni , a technologist and a co-founder of the company, says 2021 was a favourable time to start a company as the Covid-19 pandemic meant health and wellbeing were at the forefront of everybody's mind. 'Also, during that time, CoWIN was a big platform that users were accessing for their vaccination, and the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) platform was also starting up. We as a company could build our platform that is ABDM native,' says adds that various aspects of the pandemic that led to a greater adoption of electronic records - COVID medical records, COVID vaccination certificates, and the creation of ABHA ID by doctors and patients.'While we could gather a lot of users thanks to CoWIN, ADBM, and these large-scale population-level initiatives, our electronic medical record (EMR) tool has gained a lot of attention because India was also looking for an electronic, modern medical record system to install and deploy in doctors' clinics. Our focus has always been on medical records. Others in the healthcare space, like Practo, rely on demand generation that takes care of the appointments of the doctors, and they do very well. If we look at 1MG, or PharmEasy, these are large companies that are more transaction-oriented around pharmacy and lab requirements.'While transactional use cases in healthcare, like appointments and online pharmacy, have largely been solved, Sahni emphasises that the clinical side, particularly longitudinal non-transactional data, poses a key challenge. Eka's software aims to address this by making it easier for doctors to document clinical information digitally, which is crucial for insights and interoperabilitySahni says there is a strong alignment with ABHA, and it is significant that the company has been able to create 17 million such accounts in a brief span of time. 'These are very early days for ABHA, but we are big believers in this story. It's practically similar to what UPI was in 2014-2015 when they launched. There are three kinds of people who have leveraged ABHA. These include alpha users – people who love to try something new. Second, the government has mandated ABHA as an entry point to take appointments in government hospitals. Here ABHA has features like booking an appointment by scanning a simple QR code, and many of these 17million users have actually used our app to take appointments from the government hospital.'Sahni highlighted that the company operates as a 'health AI platform,' developing purpose-driven AI models called 'parrotled' for medical document understanding, voice understanding, reasoning, and text understanding. These models are embedded in the app, allowing patients to gain meaningful health insights from various reports and enabling doctors to document consultations efficiently using their AI-powered 'scribe' platform without typing.'When you download the app, sync your Gmail account, or upload a record, we convert that entire record into meaningful health information so that you can see your trends from multiple reports that are coming in. And we just don't call ourselves a simple file storage solution. Today, doctors are using our Eka Scribe platform to actually document the consultation without typing any words,' says how it works, Sahni says the technology is like an ambient AI, listening to the doctor and patient conversation and then converting it into a medical document. The conversation can happen in English and a mix of English and regional languages like Hindi, which the AI understands and interprets. It can fill vital information, symptoms, medical history, and medication details into the EMR pad, and can also generate a PDF the back of brisk adoption, Sahni says the financial goal as a four-year-old pure tech organization is to increase their paid doctor base from 12,000 to 35,000-40,000 by year-end. The company wants to expand the adoption of the developer APIs, currently used by over 160 developers and enterprises, with a pay-per-use model for services like Scribe. 'Today, we have over 160 developers or enterprises that use our developer APIs, and we want more and more developers and enterprises to start using us. These are pay-per-use APIs. So, let us say if you do a Scribe, we charge Rs X per minute for the data that you upload, and because we have an India-centric model, you would get a better output than giving your money to OpenAI or any other non-Indian LLMs,' says company, which is close to an ARR of over $3.5 million for the current year, aims to hit the $10 million ARR mark in the next 18-20 months.

TOI Dialogues – Infrastructure Chapter: UP's health & heritage tourism vision promotes sightseeing to soul seeing
TOI Dialogues – Infrastructure Chapter: UP's health & heritage tourism vision promotes sightseeing to soul seeing

Time of India

time3 hours ago

  • Time of India

TOI Dialogues – Infrastructure Chapter: UP's health & heritage tourism vision promotes sightseeing to soul seeing

The sixth edition of TOI Dialogues – Infrastructure Chapter was held in Lucknow on Thursday, bringing together policymakers, industry leaders, changemakers, and experts for engaging panel discussions and fireside chats on urban development, smart mobility, sustainability, and industrial growth. The event also served as a networking hub for real estate developers, infrastructure consultants, and investors exploring opportunities in Uttar Pradesh. The final panel of the day, 'Health & Heritage: Building a Resilient, Tourism-Driven Uttar Pradesh', carried the theme Digital Transformation: Integrating Health and Heritage and was moderated by Sanjay Bhatnagar. The panel featured Mukesh Kumar Meshram, Principal Secretary, Tourism and Culture, Government of Uttar Pradesh (IAS); Pramit Mishra, Unit Head of Max Healthcare in Lucknow; Shantanu Gupta, author of The Monk Who Transformed Uttar Pradesh; and Puja Singh, Life Coach and Co-Founder of My Mom's Village. When asked about UP's health agenda, Pramit Mishra said, 'With the legendary medical schools UP has produced, doctors are serving not only in the country but across the globe.' Responding to Bhatnagar's question on whether there is a structured policy for medical tourism, Mukesh Kumar Meshram responded, 'As such under medical tourism we haven't processed such policies but we are in process of doing so.' He further added that, 'There are two aspects in UP, one is medical tourism for hospitals and medical colleges, where people come to get treatment at a lower cost compared to other countries. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like SRM Online MBA – Empowering Future Leaders SRM Online Enquire Now Undo Second is wellness tourism, focusing mainly on preventive measures, especially after COVID-19.' Speaking about her organisation's role, Puja Singh said, 'We are contributing in the aspect of rural tourism, sustainable tourism, and wellness tourism. Our primary focus is shifting the tourism lens from sightseeing to soul seeing.' On UP's tourism potential, Shantanu Gupta praised the state's infrastructure and the successful organisation of the Mahakumbh, noting the massive number of visitors this year. The Lucknow edition of TOI Dialogues also hosted discussions on defence-linked infrastructure, Maha Kumbh 2025 preparations, police modernisation, and heritage revival. Building on past editions in Kanpur, Gorakhpur, and Varanasi, the event continues to serve as a platform for dialogue and collaboration on UP's infrastructure-led growth, attracting enthusiastic participation from government officials, investors, and industry leaders alike.

One in 5 older Indian adults had diabetes in 2019, says Lancet study: Should there be universal screening?
One in 5 older Indian adults had diabetes in 2019, says Lancet study: Should there be universal screening?

Indian Express

time7 hours ago

  • Indian Express

One in 5 older Indian adults had diabetes in 2019, says Lancet study: Should there be universal screening?

At least one in five people aged 45 and older had diabetes in India in 2019, according to a new paper published in 'The Lancet Global Health' journal. Significantly, two out of five people with diabetes (or 40 per cent of those diagnosed) were unaware of their condition. However, 46 per cent of the people identified regained control of their blood sugar levels, 59 per cent achieved blood pressure control and six per cent took a lipid-lowering medication to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. 'Moving forward with the epidemiological transition and economic development, we anticipate that this trend will continue,' Dr T V Sekher, Professor at International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai, and one of the principal authors of the study, told The Indian Express. 'Only about half of these people are aware of their condition and even fewer achieve targets for glycaemic control, blood pressure control and use of lipid-lowering medications. Our findings emphasise the urgent need to scale up policies to better prevent, detect, manage and control diabetes among middle-aged and older adults in India,' he said. The Lancet paper is based on the findings from the Longitudinal Aging Study in India (LASI) that surveyed nearly 60,000 adults in India aged 45 years and older between 2017 and 2019 to estimate the prevalence, awareness, treatment and control of diabetes. 'LASI is a nationally as well as state level representative survey and includes all health conditions of individuals. We were able to analyse them along with diabetes (like BMI, hypertension and so on). It has also analysed the difference between the self-reported and measured diabetes prevalence,' Dr Sekher said. What are findings? As per the findings, an estimated 20 million Indians have undiagnosed diabetes. Overall, eight per cent of the elderly (60-plus) subjects have been found to be undiagnosed. The prevalence of untreated diabetes among older adults (aged 45 and above) is five per cent and that of under-treated diabetes is 47 per cent. About 36 per cent are adequately treated. The study also found that rates of diabetes were similar among men and women (19.6 per cent of men vs 20.1 per cent of women). Urban diabetes prevalence (30 per cent) was approximately twice as high as rural prevalence (15 per cent). 'Around 60 per cent of individuals are aware of their diabetes. So there is a need for better awareness campaigns and universal screening for diabetes. The silver lining is that among those who are aware about their diabetes, LASI found that 94 per cent are undergoing treatment. This is the most important finding. Once people are aware, then treatment coverage is good,' Dr Sekher explained. What about state wise prevalence? The study also provides updated evidence on the patterns of diabetes within India. States in southern India tend to have a higher rate of diabetes after adjusting for age, while others in central and northeastern India have a lower rate. The states with the highest age-adjusted diabetes rates among adults aged 45 and above were Chandigarh (36.9 per cent), Kerala (36.0 per cent) and Puducherry (36 per cent). The states with the largest number of adults having diabetes were Tamil Nadu (6.1 million people), Maharashtra (5.8 million people) and Uttar Pradesh (4.7 million people). LASI used the blood samples for testing their HbA1c (an integrated measure of diabetes over the previous 90 days) in a laboratory (ICMR- NITVAR, Pune). This is a more accurate and appropriate method for testing diabetes compared to field-level testing of random glucose levels (most other large surveys used this method in India). Anuradha Mascarenhas is a journalist with The Indian Express and is based in Pune. A senior editor, Anuradha writes on health, research developments in the field of science and environment and takes keen interest in covering women's issues. With a career spanning over 25 years, Anuradha has also led teams and often coordinated the edition. ... Read More

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store