1st ultra-portable ECG machine developed and launched in India: the GE MAC 400

GE has tapped a pool of inexpensive expertise to target Indian hospitals and clinics that cannot afford its equipment designed for the U.S.

The pride on Ashish Shah’s face is unmistakable as he opens a white carton lying on the conference room table. General manager for GE Healthcare’s Technology Organization in India, Shah pulls out a contraption — slightly bigger than a landline phone, but a lot less complicated with far fewer buttons. This is the world’s first ultra-portable electrocardiogram (ECG) machine: the MAC 400.

GE Healthcare has used Indian software engineers to develop an electrocardiograph that costs les than $1,000, one-tenth the standard models used in the past. GE hopes to sell the technology in the U.S. eventually and elsewhere.

"In India we have the engineers that have the brainpower and the bandwidth to deliver on these types of projects," said V. Raja, chief executive of GE Healthcare's business in India.  They are clearly thinking of shifting the gravity to where growth is — focusing on resource-rich and people-rich countries.

GE has realized that there is a big gap between what it has traditionally got out of this market vis-a-vis what it could potentially get.

The focus on India, in a sense, is also pre-emptive. If GE doesn’t solve India’s problems, local companies will.

Adds Raja, “We see MNCs and local companies scaling the kind of revenues they get here and we think, ‘Why we can’t be an L&T, a Bharti-Airtel, or a Nokia?’ That’s clearly dawned on us.”
Click here to read more about the MAC 400 and other GE initiatives.  

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At STINSON Brand Innovation, we are expanding our health, science, and technology branding work into India through a collaboration with BrandCare, a leading pharma brand management agency based in Mumbai.

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