Innovating For A Healthier World
In India, of the 27 million babies born every year, less than 2 percent of newborns are screened for 1–4 metabolic or genetic disorders. Down Syndrome is known to affect one in 700 babies born. Despite significant advances in healthcare, low neonatal mortality and child mortality rates are still a distant dream for India. With the government’s focus on achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals on child and neonatal mortality, participation and support of corporates assumes a vital role.
On environmental health, the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe are all inundated with pollutants and contaminants, necessitating intervention to save billions of human lives being impacted by those harmful and hazardous consequences.
On addressing the needs of the market
Over the last 80 years, PerkinElmer has helped drive more insightful scientific decisions, earlier diagnosis, more effective treatments and better processes, quality, and safety. Currently, PerkinElmer serves four core end markets – Diagnostics, Life Sciences, Food and Applied Markets.
Diagnostics. Over 10 million prenatal risk assessments and over 35 million babies have been screened using our instruments and assays, making us the leader in prenatal and newborn screening globally. India, with one of the highest birth rates across the globe, is a strategic market for us. Through our initiatives with public and private sector hospitals and diagnostics chains, our goal is to provide clinicians earlier clinical insights for every expecting mother and newborn, allowing timely intervention or reassurance. We offer capabilities in extraction to analysis solutions in NGS. Our genomics laboratory in Chennai offers genomic sequencing that helps understand the underlying cause of a genetic disorder in the family.
Life sciences. From basic research and drug discovery to the development and manufacturing of new drugs and clinical treatments, we are helping researchers accelerate the discovery-to-commercialization process to bring better medicines and approaches to global markets faster. To support this vital area in India, we inaugurated two Centers of Excellence at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune – in 2017, focused on high content analysis, automated liquid handling, DNA/RNA analysis; more recently, one dedicated to in vivo imaging and research. Strengthening our relationships with leading academic institutions allows researchers and students to develop advanced competencies in life sciences research.
Food. From detecting harmful levels of toxins, heavy metals and pesticides, to ensuring accurate labeling and compliance with regulations, PerkinElmer provides fast, accurate and easy-to-use analysis solutions for the safety and quality of food. In India, PerkinElmer’s association with FSSAI for food safety has set a benchmark and opened avenues of collaboration with many other organizations.
Applied markets. We provide solutions that test the air we breathe and the water we drink, for pollutants and contaminants. Our offerings detect and quantify concentrations of heavy metals and toxic elements in soil and water, presence of microplastics in water. We optimize the performance of industrial substances – gas, biofuels, lubricants, petrochemicals and polymers. Last year, we inaugurated an Advanced High-Throughput Screening Facility – explorer G3 Project – at DBT-ICT facility in Mumbai, helping researchers develop advanced competencies in renewable energy research.
On plans to create a long-term impact on science and healthcare
As Dr Prahlad Singh takes charge as the new CEO of PerkinElmer in 2020, our focus on these four strategic end markets to drive growth and innovation and help create breakthroughs and lasting impacts on science and healthcare will intensify. PerkinElmer plans to substantially broaden its India presence by launching new solutions, fine tuning its solutions-based offerings to industry and expanding its links with Government and private research institutes. Strategic initiatives targeted at internal competency building, operational excellence and customer delight will facilitate this journey.
