2023-April-10

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Connecting a Bangalore Hospital with Cisco Tech

BY ADITYA KURULKAR · SENIOR NETWORK CONSULTING ENGINEER TECHNICAL LEADER · UNITED STATES

WITH KRYSTAL CHENG

3 MINUTE READ · 5 MINUTE LISTEN

It’s said that the knowledge and experience gained when helping those in need is most valuable.

While volunteering with Sai Aashraya, one such opportunity came to me: To build the IT and Networking infrastructure for Sai Aashraya's Super Specialty Hospital in Bangalore.

A little bit about Sai Aashraya

Sai Aashraya is a nonprofit headquartered in Bangalore. In the last six years alone, the organization’s selfless efforts have helped to adopt 11 schools and six remote villages in India, serve five million fresh and healthy meals (as of October 2022), and treat more than 75,000 patients, just to name a few.

From 2020 to 2021, Sai Aashraya noticed a growing need to support cardiac, pediatric, and obstetrical/gynecological patients from its medicare camps in the most remote regions of India. So they decided to build their own specialty hospital with 220 beds to cater to the communities’ needs free of charge. The hospital is scheduled to inaugurate by fall 2023.

Apart from offering free surgeries, food, and accommodation, this hospital will create an impact by adopting 36 villages surrounding the hospital campus; providing vocational and advanced training to generate employment opportunities, reducing school dropouts and child labor; conducting medicare camps; and more.

It will be one of a kind: A green campus with zero waste.

A wonderful opportunity to help

When I heard about this project in early 2021, I instantly jumped at the opportunity to volunteer and set up the IT and networking infrastructure for this temple of healing. As a Senior Network Consulting Engineer Technical Leader at Cisco, I was confident we had the flexibility, resources, and connections needed for this project.

I started reaching out to folks in Cisco India. We prioritized setting up the network infrastructure before anything. It is a must for collaboration, patient health records, security, and connecting with other hospitals.

I connected with the Cisco Meraki Sales and Technical Solutions team in Bangalore and journeyed them through the mission and vision of Sai Aashraya and its upcoming hospital. The team immediately latched on to this opportunity and started working with Sai Aashraya to find a world-class campus solution with the Cisco Meraki Product Suite.

The Cisco Bangalore team understood the cause and impact of this project and worked tirelessly with Sai Aashraya’s team and me to get the best discounts possible on the Meraki products and procured the purchase order. They encouraged the network vendor to implement the project free of cost and are helping us evaluate other Cisco product portfolios for collaboration and security.

Additionally, the team and I have spent many hours outside of work evaluating the right product portfolio, estimating hardware count, and laying out the network design.

Apart from the networking setup, I also spend a lot of my personal effort and time evaluating the right vendors and solutions to build other components of the hospital’s healthcare IT infrastructure.

This partnership is only going to grow from here! 

Supporting Sai Aashraya through Cisco

Thanks to Cisco's culture of giving back, flexibility, and willingness to do the best for our customers, we can be part of this great cause. Our Bangalore Cisco Meraki team has been actively volunteering with Sai Aashraya, not only through the IT infrastructure project but also with other service projects the organization runs.

While most of my volunteer work was virtual, the Cisco Bangalore team has spent many Time2Give hours volunteering on the hospital site and virtually. We recorded all volunteer hours under Sai Aashraya, which is eligible to receive matching donations through Cisco’s giving back portal.

This gives us an idea of how a selfless thought can be put into action and bring people together to do great things for those in need.

I believe Sai Aashraya is an amazing organization running service projects around the world! Contributing my time, finances, energy, and technical experience to its projects has transformed me as an individual.

I encourage my Cisco peers to look into volunteering or contributing, too!

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