A Samsung Engineer, His Sister & Neighbour Win Hearts in a Bengaluru Hospital

The three came together to dismantle a gaming console and laptop to get an X-Ray Machine running, amid the lockdown

The world today is grateful to the millions of medical professionals who are risking their lives to save ours, in this battle against a global pandemic. Samsung salutes all these professionals who are working tirelessly on the frontlines.

We are all doing our bit by staying home, following the principles of social distancing. But there are many others, who are going out of their homes and out of their way to ensure that the machines keep running, and everyone is safe. Abhishek Shankar Nadgir from Bengaluru is one of them.

We were in the middle of the lockdown when Abhishek, a customer service engineer for the Health and Medical Equipment (HME) business at Samsung India, received an urgent call from a leading private hospital in Bengaluru a few days ago about a Samsung Digital X-ray machine. Gauging the urgency of the matter, as the hospital was a Covid centre, he rushed out. The hospital wasn’t far from where he stays so he quickly drove down in his car, but was stopped by the local police as he did not have a valid pass for travelling during the lockdown.

Abhishek Shankar Nadgir, HME Division, Samsung India

The hospital then arranged for an ambulance to ferry him, with a letter authorizing the reason for his travel. Once he was able to get to the hospital, Abhishek examined the machine and found a problem in the two hard drives – one was a Sata Hard Drive, the other a SSD.

As all replacement parts come from warehouses or stores in different locations, and it was difficult to find spares in Bengaluru due to the closure, he asked the hospital to wait, while he tried to find an alternative. The hospital replied they couldn’t wait long as the machine was required to manage critical patients in the ICU, as well as for diagnostics of CoViD-19 patients.

“I had to do something. This wasn’t a regular day call. Here lives were at stake,” said Abhishek, speaking to Samsung Newsroom India. So thinking on his feet, he started asking around in his neighbourhood, and within his family and friends.

Abhishek with his sister Shweta who didn’t think twice about helping

His sister found an old laptop at home, and didn’t mind taking out the hard drive from it. “I didn’t think twice. This crisis has taught us many things. One of them surely is that if you can help someone in need, especially if it is for a good cause, you should not hesitate,” said Shweta Sontakke, Abhishek’s sister.

The bigger challenge was finding the SSD drive. Help came from Lalit Sharma, who stays in the same housing complex as Abhishek. Lalit is an IT professional and an avid gamer. Gaming was a weekend affair for him, but over the last few weeks of working from home, it had become a daily affair. His gaming console had an SSD attached to it, which he promptly disassembled to hand over to Abhishek. “It had to be done. I can sacrifice my gaming for some good that will save lives,” Lalit told Samsung Newsroom India.

With the ambulance ready, Abhishek took the two hard drives to the hospital and fixed the issue in the X-ray machine, much to the delight of the hospital authorities. The machine is working fine now, and is being used to treat critical patients. The hospital authorities have thanked the Samsung staff, especially Abhishek, for showing grit and alacrity in these difficult times, and praised the compassion shown by Shweta and Lalit, without whose help this wouldn’t have been possible.

This wasn’t a regular day call. Here lives were at stake: Abhishek

Samsung’s HME division offers Digital X-Ray and Ultrasound machines to the Indian healthcare industry. These machines are already being used in several leading private hospitals and diagnostic chains across the country.

Over the last few weeks, as part of its citizenship program ‘Samsung Smart Healthcare’, Samsung India has hastened deliveries of Digital X-ray and Ultrasound machines to government hospitals. The most recent deliveries of the equipment have been to hospitals in Noida, Rajkot and Pune that have been designated as Covid-19 facilities.