SMART CITIES: THESE THREE SOLUTIONS BY CISCO IS AS SMART AS THE PM MODI’S PET PROJECT
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s smart cities project has many takers. While Nokia has already joined the bandwagon to provide solutions to the smart cities projects, here’s a little sneak peak into what tech giant CISCO has been offering.
In a trip to networking company CISCO’s Global Development Centre in Bangalore sometime back, we were shown some of the solutions that could be used by the federal governments in order to make their cities smart. We list down some of these solutions that could be used to fuel PM Modi’s dream to build 100 Smart Cities.
Life Connections Health Centre
One of the key parameters for being a smart city is definitely a strong healthcare system in place. Considering that India is a large country with poor healthcare services—acute shortage of doctors, nurses and upgraded technologies, here’s one solution from CISCO that may help the government to overcome this challenge.
This particular solution digitally connects a doctor to his patient, who is miles away but requires urgent medical help. A patient can walk into any primary health centre, set up by the government, wherein basic medical devices are already available. Once there, the nurse or the attendant will connect with a doctor via internet and the patient then can be monitored. The solution allows a doctor to carry out most of his functions—from basics such as blood pressure, pulse rate, heart rate to complex ones such as diagnosis. All the information of the patient is registered online, which can be accessed by the doctors at any time. The only thing that probably cannot be done through this solution are surgeries, which requires the doctor to physically touch the patient.
If implemented efficiently, it can address the huge issue of poor health care facilities in the country. Currently, the solution is being used by CISCO for its employees in a remote village in Karnataka.
Safety and Operations Center
Off late, there have been too many fires breaking out in different parts of the country. In such a scenario, efficient crisis management is imperative. We visited the company’s safety and operations center and we realized, if their solution is implemented on a city-scale, life will be much easier for not just its citizens but also the authorities. This solution requires functional survelliance cameras at all times. Once connected to a central location via internet, it helps the city regulators to man the city more efficiently. The solution provides real-time feeds to the agency, which will not just manage a crisis but also help them prevent a crisis from happening.
Currently, this solution has been implemented in Navi Mumbai and if successful, it will be implemented in other parts of the city.
Remote Expert or Digital Kiosks
Relying heavily on a strong digital infrastructure, CISCO’s Digital Kiosks helps citizens have face to face interactions with the authorities. Well, Bengaluru police has been using this service in order to work on the complaints filed by the citizens at the earliest. And this seems to be really working for them.
