Digital Solutions in India 2019
14 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ AUGUST 5, 2019
Scholar), for instance, has been adopted in emerging markets
such as the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Latin America.
In the U.S., a prominent oncology society is now building an
authoritative LMS that can support a blended model of profes-
sional learning for its members, which include nurse practi-
tioners, doctors, and clinical support staff.
“This solution, based on our core iPC technology, will be an
online university that supports individual plus institutional
business models in which partner hospitals can assign relevant
courses for their employees,” Majithia explains, adding that
“it will host video- and assessment-based courses, discussion
forums, and podcasts on the first development phase. The next
phase will see the platform hosting the society’s e-books and
also a separate skills-assessment platform.”
As for iPC Health, it is now helping in the up-skilling and
professional development of more than 2,000 healthcare per-
sonnel across multiple hospitals in India. “The platform is
enabling these hospitals to enhance patient safety and healthy
care outcomes and, in turn, promoting standardization of care
across different facilities in the country. From doctors to nurses
to ambulance drivers and security guards, iPC Health is
already touching thousands of lives at different levels by facili-
tating holistic development of healthcare establishments,”
Majithia says.
Both iPC Scholar and iPC Health are undergoing contin-
uous innovation and development. New feature enhancements
and a complete microservices-based architecture are among
the product updates in the coming months. “Impelsys
Innovations Lab will also be launched later this year,” Majithia
adds. “It will be a collaborative platform for our technology
leaders and engineers to work alongside our partners and cli-
ents on cutting-edge technologies such as AI, Big Data, ana-
lytics, and blockchain to push the envelope and keep
innovating.”Integra Software Services
Cloud-based authoring plat-
form iAuthor, which has
NLP capabilities, is the
latest solution from Integra.
“A number of journal pub-
lishers are piloting the
product to re-engineer their
workflows by onboarding
some of their authors and
editors in the iAuthor envi-
ronment,” company founder
and CEO Sriram Subramanya
says, adding that the pub-
lishers are able to see real-
time results. “There is a
turnaround-time reduction
of up to 30% accompanied by efficiency gains, which trans-lates into significant savings in production costs.” Currently,
more than 1,000 journals adopt iAuthor.
“Many publishers have started to implement digital-first
and digital-only products in order to reduce cost and time to
market, and making the final products more accessible price-
wise,” adds Subramanya, whose company operates from 10
offices in six countries (including India).
Integra’s Digital Solutions Center of Excellence, with its
300-strong team, is helping publishers make a smooth digital
transition. “We offer end-to-end digital content management,
including instructional design, content development, 2-D/3-D
graphics, animation, audio/video services, AR/VR, HTML5
development, assessments, and accessibility-based content,”
Subramanya says. “Most of our platforms and products are
assisting publishers to re-engineer many aspects of their work-
flows and achieve digital-only workflows.”
The market, he says, is still in flux. “While we see OERs
and MOOCs competing with traditional publishers, we also
see big education publishers such as Pearson and Cengage
innovating their business models—for example Cengage
Learning’s Netflix model for higher-ed content. There are
other socioeconomic factors affecting the education seg-
ment, but the education publishing segment is highly
resilient.”
In recent months, more publishers are requesting systems
and platforms through which they could see metadata through
a simple user interface during the content-production stage,
and verify the metadata accuracy prior to product distribution.
“So we have updated our tools to extract the appropriate meta-
data and display them to authors and publishers within our
platforms,” Subramanya adds.
As a part of its CSR initiative, Integra has been building
classrooms and refurbishing infrastructure at a 135-year-old
rural school—founded by Subramanya’s great-grandfather and
managed by Subramanya as a nonprofit—benefitting 1,200
underprivileged students. Integra has set up IT and science
labs to enable students to start learning computer and science
skills from an early age; Integra has also provided scholarships
for those struggling financially to continue their education,
and it has launched a school website to bring together its
alumni and collectively contribute to the betterment of both
the school and students.Lapiz Digital
Accessibility-related services were the most sought-after
solution at Lapiz Digital last year. “Then there were requests
for e-book conversion, composition, digital services, interac-
tive whiteboard development, and e-learning,” president V.
Bharathram says, adding that AR/VR is more popular among
his corporate clients. “Cost remains the deciding factor in
whether we adopt HTML5 for e-learning, go for a less com-
plicated e-book, or simply use an editable PDF as a
solution.”Sriram Subramanya, founder and
CEO of Integra Software Services