US-based startup offers fire safety tech to Indian hospitals

A US-based startup has started offering an IoT-based disaster management solution to avert possible fire hazards in hospitals, a company official said.

The firm - MachineSense LLC - has designed a "rental model" for offering the fire-safety solution, leveraging the Internet of Things technology, in India so that the healthcare facilities can adopt it easily, he said.

"Fire due to short-circuit is common. We offer real-time analysis and monitoring of power for hospitals to avert fire accidents and also to protect medical equipment like MRI machines," MachineSense CTO Biplab Pal told PTI.

Fire in hospitals is more critical in terms of disaster management as it involves moving of patients, he said.

The three-year-old startup has implemented and evaluated the system at the Institute of Neurosciences, Kolkata (I-NK) for the last couple of months, Pal claimed.

Incidentally, a major fire broke out in a city-based private hospital in 2011, leaving 91 people dead.

The fire safety system has also been deployed at the Nandaram Market in the city's Burrabazaar, which was earlier ravaged by fire, the company claimed.

"We offer a rental model in India for the entire solution for easy adaptability through cloud technology," the official said.

Explaining how to avert major fire break-out, another company official said due to various power quality-related factors, there are incidents where it was found power in a "neutral" line exceeding 80 amp when it should not exceed 5 amp.

The Baltimore-headquartered company has 75 engineers in its Kolkata centre as against manpower of 32 in the US and pumped in USD 9 million, the official said.

The company reported a business of USD 3 million in 2019, he added.