Pratima Rao has been appointed as mission
director & head of Biocon Foundation. Prior
to joining Foundation, she was heading the
Department of Mathematics & Computer
Science, Baldwin Girls High School,
Bengaluru for over two decades.
She is a well-known educationist who
is committed to quality education and also
an author of the ‘Challenge Mathematics’ a
series on mental mathematics, published by
Macmillan India Limited.
She has been a proud recipient of the
‘Best Educator’ award initiated by the
Rustom Irani Foundation in
Bangalore and associated
with Biocon Foundation’s
‘Chinnara Ganitha’ rural
education program
since its inception in- As a Mission
Director, she will be
responsible for the
overall management of
the activities, strategy
and operations
of Biocon
Foundation.
Biocon Foundation
appoints Pratima Rao
as its mission director
http://www.biospectrumindia.com | July 2017 | BioSpectrum l PEOPLE NEWS^15
Bimal Desai, MD, MBI, Assistant Vice President and Chief Health Informatics
Officer at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) was honored at the
Philadelphia Alliance for Capital and Technologies (PACT) annual black-tie gala
as the winner of this year’s Healthcare Innovator award. The award is given to a
company, researcher, or investor who provides innovative solutions that have a
positive impact on the quality, cost, and access to healthcare.
Dr Desai and his team have taken on the challenge of better connecting
our patients, doctors, and the CHOP Care Network through technology
and innovations in telemedicine.
Under the direction of CHOP’s president and CEO Madeline Bell,
Dr Desai helped create the Hospital’s new Digital Health Program. Dr
Desai also co-founded Haystack Informatics, a company spun out
of CHOP’s “Open Canvas” innovation competition in 2014 which
uses patients’ electronic health records (EHR) and healthcare
employees’ patterns of behavior to protect patient privacy.
In a proud moment for the Indian research community,
a rare congenital condition is set to be named after a
Karnataka doctor. It’ll be called Nallegowda Syndrome.
Dr Mallikarjun Nallegowda, from Holalkere in
Chitradurga district, studied in
Bangalore Medical College in the
1990s and is currently working in
Colorado, US. He is said to be the
first doctor to notice and write
about a rare congenital disorder,
whose characteristics are missing
hand bones, absence of a thumb,
presence of two urethras,
increased distance between the
eyes and an unusual location of
kidney and heart.
In 2002, when he was
working in Delhi, Dr Nallegowda came across a
12-year-old boy with many problems at the outpatient
department of All India Institute of Medical Sciences.
The boy underwent further diagnostic tests and
chromosomal studies, and the findings didn’t match any
existing medical condition.
In 2003, Australia’s database Pictures Of Standard
Syndromes and Undiagnosed Malformations named it
‘Acrorenal Syndrome - Nallegowda type’. The London
database called it ‘Nallegowda – radial defects; renal
anoms; dextrocardia’.Dr Bimal Desai wins
Healthcare Innovator Award
A rare disorder
discovered by
Karnataka doctor