<div>If you’re paranoid about medicines, you have every right to be. As with anything these days, there are people who will sell you fake stuff to make a quick buck. Young Nathan Sigworth, the CEO of PharmaSecure, a company with offices in New Hampshire and our own Gurgaon, is determined to fight drug counterfeiting, specially in developing countries. He has persuaded several pharma companies to print certain authentication codes on medicine packets. A user can send this back to a central database and find out whether the drug is real or fake. <br /> </div><div>To begin with, users could SMS the serial number to a number given on the packaging to instantly get an OK message to take the medicine. Or, even whether to buy the medicine. But now, Android users also have the option of using a PharmaSecure app which will scan the number and tell you if it’s safe to assume the medication is genuine. PharmaSecure works with nine drug companies in India and has put codes on 50 million drug packages. <br /> </div><div><strong>You We Can</strong></div><div>Cricketer Yuvraj Singh’s battle with cancer is something that every Indian is aware of. But there is very little awareness about cancer as a disease and how many others it affects. Yuvraj decided to do his bit to correct that and also help cancer patients in need. With Microsoft, he launched an app YouWeCan for Windows Phone. You can try this app and buy it for Rs 565 — it’s what one instance of cancer detection costs, and it will be your contribution to fighting cancer most directly.<br /> <br />You can also donate money or volunteer time with the Yuvraj Singh Foundation or use the app to buy YouWeCan T-shirts and ribbons to spread awareness. The app has pictures and content about Yuvraj’s life up to the point of surviving cancer, and includes facts about different types of cancer, and benefits of early detection. With the full-paid version, a large portion of the payment goes to the Yuvraj Singh Foundation for their anti-cancer drive.<br /> </div><div><strong>Hop To Get Rewarded</strong></div><div>It’s nice to see location-based services beginning to take root in India. With the staggering number of mobile connections in the country, it’s only logical to assume that people will benefit from such services. The Gurgaon-based Hoppr team describes their particular hyper-local service in three words: checkin, rewards, coupons. Register with hoppr.com. Then, when you’re out in the town, you check in at places by sending an SMS to 56660 (toll free) with the name of the place. If they are on the list (and there’s a large list of 3,000 places) you’re checked in and get a coupon for a discount. You can also SMS to get offers nearby. You also accumulate points for checking in and these can be used for further benefits. The nice thing is that you can check in from regular feature phones as well. If you take a look at hoppr.com, you can see a continuous stream of users checking into various places. There is no app yet, although there is one planned for Android.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; ">(This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 01-10-2012)</span> <br /><br /> </div>
BW Reporters
Mala Bhargava has been writing on technology well before the advent of internet in Indians and before CDs made their way into computers. Mala writes on technology, social media, startups and fitness. A trained psychologist, she claims that her understanding of psychology helps her understand the human side of technology.
