Virtual family visit

For most

Indians, it is a moment of anxiety, when he learns that someone

in his kith and kin has been rushed to a hospital. He wants

to be beside his dear one. But what if one is in the US or some

other place and unable to see how his/her relative is doing

after being rushed out in an emergency. What one hopes in such

times is that someone in the hospital or a relative is able

to update on the situation. Latching on this psyche, is a hospital

in Bangalore, Wockhardt Hospital and Heart Institute. This hospital

has used technology to offer a unique service for its customers-that

of allowing those who are miles away an opportunity to be at

least present virtually at the hospital. This patient care modus

operandi is via the Net, free of cost.

The hospital

has hooked up a webcam to its site (www.whhi.com) to Netcast

real-time audio and video images to make available on-line information

about the state of health of its patients to anyone who wants

to know. All that the patient's kin, who is far away, has to

do is logging into the site using an assigned password to him.

For the Netcast, an audio or video clip of the patient and his

views are recorded and uploaded on the Net as 4-5 MB file. According

Vishal Bali, general manager, Wockhardt Hospital and Heart Institute,

the aim is to not only relieve the anxiety of patients' relatives,

but also to make the patient feel psychologically good. The

project, which is estimated to cost close to $15,000, was made

possible by the technical inputs from Think Ahead. Though, this

maybe difficult to download in the Indian conditions, it no

doubt is a smart prescription in the world of value-added innovative

services. n

Vital

Statistics on Job Hunting on the Net

• "Job
  
  hunting on the Net is following e-mail in its growth"-Andy
  
  Grove, chairman, Intel Corp.
  
  
  
  
• Over
  
  75 percent of the Fortune 500 companies to employ the Net
  
  for job hunting by January 2000.
  
  
  
  (In January 1998, the figure was 17 percent, in January 1999
  it was 45 percent.)
  
  
  
  
  
• 28,500
  
  job sites and 2.5 million resumes available on the Net.
  
  
  
  
• About
  
  65 percent of job seekers are from non-technical background.
  
  
  
  
• Using
  
  the Net saves 20 days of the hiring circle according to iLogos.com.
  
  
  
  
• Hits
  
  at Naukri.com, with a live database of 5,000 jobs, reaching
  
  two million a month mark.
  
  
  
  
• The iLogos
  
  report says companies are presently achieving three results
  
  with the Internet:
  
  
  
  1) Lower Recruiting Costs: Internet recruiting, if done properly,
  can cost 80 percent less than recruiting through newspaper
  
  ads.
  
  
  
  2) Faster Recruiting Cycle: Firms can cut up to two weeks
  off the recruiting cycle by moving to the Internet.
  
  
  
  3) Higher Calibre Recruits: Top achieving computer software
  companies are receiving up to 70 percent of their total applications
  
  on-line. Top aerospace firms are achieving 35 percent of applications
  
  on-line.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Job seekers
  
  are equally keen to move recruiting on-line. Of the surveyed
  
  companies, 52 percent reported that the employment page was
  
  the most visited page on their web site after the home page.
  
  The terms "employment" and "jobs" were
  
  the 26th and 27th most popular terms entered into the Yahoo
  
  search engine in November 1996, as reported by Eyescream Interactive.
  
  
  
  

Source:

Data collated from various reports.