Developments in Biometrics Services

Identity seems to acquire greater importance when it is weak. This apparent paradox has been the debating point on identity in recent times. Conventionally, identity verification was always based on the approval of biographical and attributed features. Post the small and large scale societies, industrial societies; globalization presents the third era of personal identification. It is the human body that is at the center of all identity management strategy. The tension that is there between personal identity and human body is a crucial one in today’s health care sector. Keeping this in mind, most hospitals, health care organizations and clinical research organizations are working in order to come up with efficient biometrics system and biometrics security infrastructure.

What is Biometrics?

Broadly defined, biometrics is known as a set of methods deployed for observing and analyzing significant attributes of living people or populations in order to identify unique features or active properties. Innovative biometric identifiers must be:-

 

* Universal i.e. biometric component exists in everyone

* Unique i.e. biometric element is distinctive for each person

* Permanent i.e. the property of biometric component will remain the same over a period of time in each individual

Biometric Services Offered by Indian CRO’s

Today Indian clinical research organizations i.e. CRO’s provide a complete range of data management services from Phase 1 Study to Phase IV studies as well as in bio-equivalence. The objective is to transform data into consistent and to the point trial outputs that complies with the regulatory rules.

Biometric team in CRO’s focuses on accelerating the regulatory submission process and reduces timelines through innovative thinking. The team is efficient in managing multi-centric studies, for global and domestic requirements in multiple therapeutic areas. The biometrics services portfolio in popular CRO’s includes the following components:-

Database Programming

 

* CRF Design (paper & electronic)

* CRF Annotation

* Database Programming

* Validation Checks

* Metadata Repository Management

Data Management

 

* Data Acquisition

* Data Reconciliation

* Discrepancy Management

* Medical Coding (MeDRA & WHODD)

* Database Lock

* Data Extraction for Reporting

Pharmacokinetic & Pharmacodynamic Studies

 

* Sampling Point Estimation

* Technical Document Review

* PK/PD Query Resolution

* PK/PD Subject Matter Expert

* Pharmacokinetic support across study engagement

PK/PD Reporting

 

* SDMS Data Extraction

* PK Data Analysis

* PK Summary Reporting

Biostatistics

 

* Randomization

* Sample size estimation

* Trial Design Inputs

* Statistical Analysis Plan

* Statistical Analysis

* Biostatistics Subject Matter Expert

Statistical Reporting

 

* TLF Programming

* CDISC Data Mapping (SDTM & ADaM)

* Clinical Data Repository

* Pooled Data Analysis & Reporting

* Safety (ADR) Reporting

* Patient Profiles & Data Cleaning Reporting

The present biometrical methods of identification comprise of fingerprints, retinal and iris scans ultrasound fingerprinting, facial feature recognition, hand geometry, ear shape, body odor, signature dynamics and many more. Research for future biometrics is on that will include DNA analysis, neural wave analysis, and skin luminescence.

Read Also On: Phase I Study, Clinical Laboratory   

Phishing Awareness to Help Your Employees Combat the Threats Effectively

You may have the best technological tools to drive your business operations. You also may have the most proficient employees that can guarantee you with immense success with their expertise. But if you have weak and ineffective security measures all the advanced tools and the efforts of your employees will go to waste and your operation will be wiped out completely. Many people think that their business will remain unaffected as long as they have sophisticated technology. But time and again it has been proved that even the best technology cannot save the business if proactive initiatives are not implemented to control the risks on time.


You must not ignore the fact that the online environment is flooded with various threats and each day a new threat is released. Phishing has caused distressing losses to many businesses and before you become the next victim you must ensure that your business is insured completely. Phishing attacks are targeted at individuals specifically and one employee can start off the domino effect in your business. Usually the employees of a company are not aware what phishing is all about and they can easily leak sensitive information unintentionally to complete strangers.


The employees receive emails which they presume are sent by their banks or financial institutions. In reality these mails are sent from fraudulent websites which the employees are unable to detect. The emails contain links and attachments asking the employees to click on them. When they click on the links and attachments they are taken to the fraudulent sites where they are asked to divulge confidential financial details. This can happen with your employees also if they are not educated adequately about how the phishing operations work. It is advisable to employ the automated anti phishing software that ensures comprehensive and robust protection against phishing.


The software launches a mock phishing attack to test the awareness levels of your employees. It tracks and records their actions for a critical analysis after the test is completed. The results are sent to the employees through personalized emails with powerful phishing protection strategies to counter the attacks more effectively. The anti phishing tool helps in identifying the vulnerabilities in your business so that you can take remediation measures promptly before any disastrous event takes place. The software helps save costs and prevents losses in business.


The intensity of damage caused by phishing is unfathomable. It is better to take precautionary measures and carry on your business without any fears.


Read also on: Phishing fall rate

Invest In Social Media Analytics Tools

Go back by five to seven years and who could imagine that mere chatting or exchanging views would acquire such a great potential. So much so, that this very process today is streamlined and is officially termed as social media interactions. The advent of numerous networking channels and websites such as Twitter, FaceBook, Stumple Upon and the like has added to the prevalence of social media. Conversations and discussions held in social media are of utmost relevance for start up ventures as well as established brands. For the former, it is about spreading awareness of their core business and for the latter it is about enhancing the existing brand reputation and carrying on with online branding. Most of all, it is an outlet to establish a personal connect with the audience at large. 


Importance of Social Media Analytics

 

Today it is not just enough to be socially present. One has to be proactive and positive in their social interactions. At the same time, enterprises must deploy useful techniques to measure this online interaction and presence. This is done through a set of social media analytics tools. The social media information collected through these tools is of great importance. They are helpful in enabling an organization to arrive at useful online campaign strategies and results in better social media marketing.

Today majority of enterprises are focusing on the needs to adopt social media analytics. It is a crucial tool for every social media user, be it an individual business owner or a company to increase its online effectiveness. Social media analytics provides a fresh perspective for analyzing interactive marketing by incorporating, evaluating and assisting companies to respond to social intelligence that they have got by expanding their reach. It also minimizes retention and sets up greater revenue. It assists you to come at important business decisions in terms of marketing and branding.

Industry Offerings for Social Media Analytics

 

Top notch brands today specialize in social media analytics tools that offer fast results to retain a track of social media behaviours in real-time and get mass feedback on what will and what will not work on a particular product or service. Other benefits are as follows :-

 

  • Offers trending views and drill-down capabilities
  • Provides insights to make faster, smarter operating decisions across huge amounts of social data
  • Acquisition to revenue
  • Derives faster insights into the key influences on your K-Factor and viral campaigns
  • Understand what keeps customers engaged, and uncover the levers that can most influence revenues.

With the growth of popular social networking sites today marketers are assessing in a unique way about the next analytic requirements in this of web 2.0 scenario. Leading service providers provide enterprise hosted solutions keeping in mind their client’s business needs and challenges.


Learn more about :- Facebook analytics


Hearing Loss Prevention Easy With Earplugs

Of all the major health hazards caused today owing to heavy noise backgrounds is occupational hearing loss. Such noisy backgrounds have been due to the acute industrialization and heavy industry works. Noisy backgrounds can generate from aviation works, mining and metallurgy, intensive go down work and many more. All these noise eventually results in permanenent hearing and other auditory ailments.

 

In this context, if you have been hearing about hearing loss prevention then it is because it is one of the top most concerns of organizations today. This refers to making the industrial workforce adequately equipped with instruments that would help them to hear by suppressing the extra unwanted noise. The main aim is to enable them to communicate better with their fellow workers. Various organizations have resorted to advanced hearing protection devices and have been successful in enhance the speech and reducing the background noise. Furthermore, these devices results in eradicating Noise Induced Hearing Loss (NIHL).

 

Service providers in hearing protection devices have come up with advanced earplugs and earmuffs. These equipment guarantees speech clarity even under untoward and loud noise backgrounds, for instance:-

 

  • Impact – Explosion, gunshot and hammer
  • Intermittent – Heavy Vehicles, machinery and workshop
  • Continuous –Pumps, motors and compressor

 

It has been noticed that occupational hearing loss occurs mostly in places that have heavy sounds and excessive machinery works.  The apt way to work under such noisy environments without getting affected is by using electronic earplugs. These new age devices are equipped with a built-in Noise Suppression and Speech Enhancement technology that offers a comprehensive communication solution. Other features include the following:-

 

  • Enables face to face communication that makes you speak without any hindrance with anyone in vicinity
  • Covers a short range up to 50 meters
  • Provides an easy connection even in long distance
  • Provides the users with a two way radio or Bluetooth cell phone for communication
  • The electronic earplugs are able to adapt fast to any changing situation or background noise level, type or frequency.

 

Since these hearing protection devices are required to clear certain industry and quality standards they need to undergo certain review and screening procedures. This guarantees the users with quality service and longevity. Each of the devices offer a 360 degrees binaural situational awareness, that makes a wearer aware of the surrounding he is placed in and of what is happening around him.

 

Adopt Translation Technology for Global Support

Technological advancement and overall globalization have brought about a change in customer behavior.  With all the information available online, the customer is independent enough to research the product or service they want.  Businesses are realizing that content on every website needs to be available in the visitor's native language to enable better customer self-service and greater market reach.  This allows them to understand the product or service better and make quick buying decisions.

Of the many trends that have been identified amongst cyber savvy consumers two prominent ones are:

 

Customers expect more

·         Between the year 2008 and 2009 user expectations concerning brand value increased by 20%.

·         86% of users quit all business transactions with an enterprise due to unfavorable experiences in 2009.

 

Customers are independent and social

·         Approximately 90% of user interactions take place through indirect channels, such as websites and other social communities.

·         About 60% of customers prefer to receive information and want to purchase in their own language.

The challenge most businesses face is being able to offer a positive customer experience and global support. This eventually translates to a global customer base. Traditionally customer service would either mean publishing a web page with relevant details or providing a toll free number. The introduction of chat, email and other social networking forums has given rise to other mediums of customer care. For global enterprises the communication experience should be consistent across all languages. It must also offer a balance between fulfilling brand expectations as well as consumer’s expectation for instant service. An appropriate and updated website translation technology is a must.


Eminent service providers of website translation solutions with their innovative products allow their clients to interact with consumers in a way that is suitable for the consumer. The solution makes it easy to publish the information and make it searchable. The majority of customers look for information by themselves in the company website or in other web pages in order to get answers to their queries.

Advanced translation technology allows enterprises to publish 100% of their knowledge base and provide content in other languages as well. The published content is further indexed by search engines and becomes accessible to the consumer’s in their native language leading to better customer satisfaction and global support.


Furthermore, these service providers allow every monolingual support agent to become a multi-lingual communicator over email or live chat. This enables enterprises and their support agents to concentrate on the subject matter and communicate with the customer in real-time.


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Create A Sound Anti-Phishing Strategy With The Right Solution Provider

The increasing number of security breach incidents in recent times has highlighted phishing  as a key risk for which organizations need to develop specific control measures. While it’s good to be informed of the most customary signs of a spoofed email, it makes better sense to prepare yourself even further against phishing. While people controls are the main focus area in phishing attacks against unsuspecting users, it is imperative for technology and process controls also to be deployed.


Sophisticated phishing attacks can expose your company’s sensitive information to malicious outsiders without you being aware of it. This sensitive information may include custodial data (customer, health, credit or other personally identifiable data) or classified corporate information like trade secrets, business plans, sales forecasts etc., which if compromised, can not only lead to loss of brand reputation, it may also lead to significant financial damage for your company. Organizations need to look beyond traditional technology controls, and look to continuous education and awareness to fight phishing attacks. It is therefore essential for countermeasures like anti phishing solutions to be considered in order to deal with the increasing technical sophistication of criminals conducting phishing scams, exploiting human vulnerabilities.


While the most important protection from phishing is constant vigilance and moderate skepticism, successful phishing awareness and control needs to include law enforcement and employees of targeted businesses so that they are able to recognize scams. The key to protecting an organization starts with continuous education and awareness building. Partnering with the best solution provider can help arm your employees against malicious attacks and create a prioritized action plan to mitigate possible threats in a proactive manner. They must provide statistics on user behavior, measures security awareness among employees, identifies data leakage, assesses Data Loss Prevention programs and tests the incident response program. They must also simulate a phishing attack and captures user's potential reaction to a real attack.


Invest in a solution that helps organizations to protect their most valuable assets, their employees, from becoming phishing victims. While there are a number of anti-phishing tools offered in the market, it is very important to opt for a solution that can also address "incident based reactive approaches". Do not rely on end-users to run malware inspection and to be able to detect and eliminate these increasingly sophisticated threats.


With a good solution provider, your organization can build the best line of defence by increasing an employee's awareness and also play a fundamental role in an organization's anti-phishing strategy.


Read also on: Anti phishing software

Accelerate Innovation Programs: Leveraging Enterprise Collaboration and Social Tools

Remember the ”Suggestion Box” ? It wasa platform where we could voice and share our ideas and creative inputs. The words “voice” and “share” is of utmost importance when it comes to idea sharing. We have shifted from the physical suggestion boxes to innovative web tools that collate ideas from employees and customers round the globe. Today enterprises from LG Electronics to U.S. Transportation Safety Authority use the web for ideation to improve their products and business.

Idea management thus has taken center stage and is crucial for organizations aiming to attain a competitive edge over others. Furthermore, the collaboration landscape too is no more about teams working in silos to fulfill specific goals and objectives. It is expanding across enterprises fostering partnership and team work amidst employees, who might have worked single handedly before. The main reason behind this shift is, to positively encourage a company to forsake its“need to know” approach and adopt a “need to share” culture. This promotes free flow of information and communication amongst employees.

Crowd sourcing as an Enterprise Collaboration Tool

Today enterprise collaboration has adopted a “people-centric” approach thatbrings together various business units and functional areas to work together. It aims to connect influential people, the audience at large and organizations through technologies to generate ideas and to derive maximum benefit out of it. Crowd sourcing is considered as a next generation enterprise collaboration tool. The term might appear a jargon at first, but it is an essential part of enterprise innovation programs today. The central idea here is to tap into the collective intelligence of masses for completing business agendas, which otherwise could have been done through outsourcing or by the company itself. The process enables managers to increase their talent pool size and gain deeper insights intothe customer mind set.

You can reap the above mentioned benefits by investing in innovative idea management solutions. These solutions offer anappropriate platform to bring in all concerned members of your organization and motivate them to work ona given situation proactively. This ideation platform is similar to crowdsourcing software that enables you to attain greater transparency, quicker updates and viable solutions. Other benefits that an idea management tool offers are:-


  • Process improvements
  • New competitive services and products’
  • Enhanced decision making and enterprise collaboration in a team
  • Competitive edge over other market players
  • Improved brand loyalty and value
  • Spot new areas of expansion and hidden talent within an organization


Social Media and Innovation Programs Innovation programs and ideation is incomplete if not extended to the social media realm. The choice is a simple one. If you want your customers to come up with ideas, suggestions and other creative contributions, they you have to be tapped fromwhere they are. Majority of them are onTwitter, Facebook and other social networking platforms. It helps you to accelerate your innovation programs by publishing wikis, blogs and articles, requesting for public feedback on fresh content and many more. Furthermore, networking socially on a regular basis gives you anidea as to what is working or not working for your brand.

Know more on :  Idea capture & Innovation products

Components of Medical and Phase I Studies

The Indian medical sector along with the global medical sector has been in a constant state of innovation. In the past few years, medical institutions and organizations has been encouraging medical studies and researches to a great extent. The main objective was to come up with new drug development, new treatment techniques and diagnosis methods to alleviate ailments.

Importance of Medical Studies

 

Medical research and studies have been an inseparable part of the overall medical field. It helps to find answers to intriguing health questions and to overcome chronic diseases with efficient cures. Owing to this reason, various methods have been formulated to help medical professionals and aspiring medical students in their experiments and findings.

Apart from collecting rare and interesting medical facts, it is essential to keep an eye for supporting facts concerning unexplained and unresolved clinical phenomena. This total procedure includes interviewing key persons such as experts and senior medical surgeons, library work, analyzing the data collected and solutions and recommendations addressed to a particular set of audience for which the experiment or study had been conducted. Therefore, any kind of medical study or clinical research must assess the value addition that it holds for the patients.

Discussing on medical studying, a noteworthy branch that has gathered prominence over the past few years is the Phase 1 Study. Eminent clinical research organizations (CRO) specialize in this kind if study by providing state -of –the- art infrastructure as well as a team of healthy volunteers. It also includes the following:-

* First-in-human

* Single Ascending Dose studies

* Multiple Ascending Dose studies

* New Chemical Entities

* Dose Escalating studies

Infrastructure and Phase I Studies

 

In most cases medical infrastructure has a profound role to play in Phase 1 and other medical studies. Indian CRO’s offer an expert group having ample medical know how and are supported by updated medical equipments. This apart, a team of well trained nursing staff is present to execute various kinds Clinical Pharmacology studies.

Most Indian CRO’s with their key strengths feature in the area of planning, designing and managing Clinical Trials. They are associated with clients that belong to national and international Pharmaceutical giants. The client portfolio includes innovators, generic pharmaceutical enterprises, biotechnology and medical device organizations to name a few. Their clinical research programs deploy innovative study designs in clinical pharmacology, medical writing, biometrics, Bioanalytical method development and Pharmacokinetic analysis. All these studies along with Phase 1 study is conducted by a team of experienced clinical coordinators and research associates.

Read Also On: Phase I Study, Clinical Laboratory

Increase the Bottom Line with Effective Tax Planning

The growth in the wealth for an individual, the corporate sectors or business houses is lined by the regulations for tax deductions. All law abiding citizens worldwide are aware of the fact that evading tax payment is illegal in every country. However, the globalization led business operations across the shores have paved way for individuals and business houses to avoid paying taxes in the country of origin.

 

However, with globalization helping enterprises to spread its wings to offshore locations with flourishing financial   operations, organizations and individuals tend to take up fraudulent routes to evade tax payment which creates issues for the entity. To ensure compliance with the government tax regulations, the IRS extracts information using civil Information Document Requests for the Foreign Bank Accounts. The details from FBAR helps these officials to seek out any undisclosed offshore accounts.

 

The failure to report substantial income either accrued as dividends or daily business receipts, claiming for large deductions against fake charitable contributions, discrepancy in financial statements and even improper allocation of income are all that get caught by the IRS examiners.

 

Although tax evasion is an illegal process, tax planning is not. Tax planning is a process to  determine  various options for reducing and eliminating tax liabilities on an individual or corporates. However, most of the small and medium enterprises tend to ignore the importance of tax planning. Considered as an ongoing process by most of the successful businessman, a good tax advice is a valuable commodity. Tax planning is the process of looking at various tax options in order to determine when, whether, and how to conduct business and personal transactions to reduce or eliminate tax liability.

 

Effective planning is vital for the business as well as for the individual as it facilitates reduction of tax liabilities. Tax planning can take the organizations beyond tax compliance and proactively take the organization through to after tax-income levels with efficient tax saving strategies.  A number of tax planning strategies are today available both for small and medium enterprises as well as large corporate sectors. However, the services offered by the leading tax consultancy organizations are aimed either at individual tax situations or the business at large. Nevertheless, it accomplishes simple goals of reducing taxable income, lowering tax rates and claiming tax credits, besides buying time.

 

All these above mentioned objectives are achieved by the leading consultants on the basis of their efficient tax planning  strategiesThe strategies invested includes  splitting income among several legal entities, shifting income or expenses from one financial year to another, deferring tax liabilities through investments in pension plans as well as investments that generates income that is exempt from taxes either by the federal government or the state.

 

Read Also On: Entity FormationCorporate Tax Preparation

 

Brand Protection against Counterfeiters with a Pragmatic Approach

Consumers who are unaware of the repercussions of fake goods purchases will not consider buying a duplicate perfume bottle at half the price as illegal or condemnable. If only they were aware what effects these counterfeit cause, they would perhaps think twice the next time they decide to buy a fake product.


The use of fake medicines, cigarettes and batteries increases the mortality risks.  A country’s security is at stake when defective microchips are used in their computers for carrying out critical operations. The aircrafts that are used for commercial and military purposes endangers the lives of innumerable people when duplicate parts are used.  The U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee has confirmed the high influx of counterfeit electronic components in the U.S. weapons and navigation systems.


The regular customers who favor counterfeit goods for spending a few dollars less are not completely aware of how these counterfeit products can cause adverse effects to the environment. They do not realize how the efforts of the genuine manufacturers are wasted and revenues are lost. Even if the customers are unaware of the larger picture you can estimate the kind of losses that you will incur when your genuine products are either replicated and sold or are found in the gray market. While the customers are indifferent about the use of counterfeit products, it is an impossible job for the manufacturers to establish the genuineness of the sold products and prevent the fraudulent operations effectively.


Nonetheless, adequate action must be taken to control this activity. This can be done by investing in a competent anti-counterfeiting solution that can help you identify the main sources by constantly tracking their activities on online auction sites, B2B sites and 3rd party sites. The solution provides you with accurate and consistent pricing lists, discounts and quantities sold despite the volume of market listings.


These anti-counterfeiting solutions clearly identify the violators   as they rank and prioritize the suspects. This facilitates you to take immediate legal action against them. Once the suspects are identified, cease and desist letters can be generated and the auctions are shut down without any wastage of time.


The enhanced visibility of the counterfeiting and gray markets provided by the anti-counterfeiting solution helps in saving you revenues and brand reputation. The solution is equipped with unique capabilities and can be customized as per the requirements of your business.  They provide you with accurate statistics of the products that are being counterfeited and the price at which they are being sold.


Although the counterfeiting brigade may seem unstoppable, the anti-counterfeiting solution deploys intelligent strategies that helps identify, curb and destroy the fake operations effectively and permanently.


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