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Additional file 1. Appendix I.

Additional file 3. Supplementary material S1.

Additional file 2. Appendix II.

The demand for Diagnostic Centers in India is propelled by changes in culture, increase in population, rise in infectious disease, increase in healthcare expenditure and rising adoption of preventive health check-ups. The Private diagnostic market in India has limited number of organized players and the overall market is driven by unorganized laboratories. The Diagnostic Imaging equipments such as X-ray, CT (Computed Tomography) Scanner and BMD (Bone Mineral Densitometer) need to be handled with utmost care as they have human made ionizing radiation exposure risks. India is one of the largest consumers of refurbished diagnostic imaging equipments and the beneficiaries include Diagnostic Centers, Corporate Hospitals and Chain of Diagnostic Laboratories. The Atomic Energy Regulatory Body (AERB) in India regulates the usage of diagnostic imaging equipments by evolving policies and procedures to be strictly followed by Diagnostic Centers for containing excessive radiation. The changes in procurement policy made by AERB in September 2015 have restricted importing of used diagnostic imaging equipments up to a maximum of 7 years. This regulatory change has triggered a research question, Diagnostic Laboratories - Are these Radiation Safe? This research was conducted with the objective of assessing whether diagnostic centers follow the best practices mandated by AERB. The researcher has conducted a very structured assessment on AERB compliance using 7 different parameters namely, Regulatory, Layout Engineering, Technician Competency, Human Safety, Operations Knowhow, Radiation Exposure Monitoring and Top Management Commitment. This study was conducted in 192 diagnostic centers across multiple cities in Tamil Nadu, with a structured questionnaire contained 34 questions. Based on the responses received on the actual practices followed by diagnostic centers to contain Radiation risk, Radiological Compliance Index (RCI) was estimated. The analysis has revealed that Top Management Commitment was very low with a RCI score of 2.02 (Moderate Presence of AERB recommended best practices) and Operations “Know-Know” was high with a score of 4.40 (High Presence of AERB recommended best practices). The comparative analysis of RCI between National Accreditation Board for testing and Laboratories (NABL) accredited (RCI Score 3.19) and Non NABL (RCI Score 3.18) diagnostic centers has indicated that the accreditation did not significantly influence the compliance. The Pearson correlation co-efficient has established moderately positive correlation with Revenue (+ 0.321) & Patient Queue size (+0.293) on RCI. This study has concluded with sufficient evidence and analysis that Private Diagnostic Centers need to focus on appointing Radiation Safety Officer, monitoring radiation exposure dosage, periodical equipment service, continuous training of their staff and periodical QA tests for equipment fitness in order to achieve significant regulatory compliance maturity levels. This research has further recommended similar research in private diagnostic laboratories in other states in India and comparative analysis of compliance to AERB guide lines between Government Hospitals and Private Diagnostic Centers.

The diversity, distribution, occurrence and abundance of echinoderms were studied in Palk Bay and Gulf of Mannar Biosphere Reserve during April 2010 through May 2012. Standard prawn trawl net, modified with added sinkers/bobbins, was used to assess the echinoderms. A total swept area of 0.45204 km2 in Gulf of Mannar Biosphere Reserve (GoMBR) (47 trawls) and 0.23265 km2 in Palk Bay (30 trawls) was covered. Forty-seven species of echinoderms under 21 families were encountered during this survey. The species diversity, species abundance and species richness values were high in GoMBR and low in Palk Bay. The sea grass bed, sandy bottom and good coral reef cover, which might be the attracted for more species in GoMBR. Since most of the echinoderms are very closely associated with coral reef ecosystem either for food, shelter or reproduction, it is utmost important to save the coral reef ecosystem which in turn conserves the echinoderms.

The Medical Devices Industry's growth largely relies on wellness component of device manufacturer and service provider responses to service requirements of the market. Service is a thankless profession and more so in Medical Devices Industry, wherein need for service professionals to resolve the issues encountered by users are much more demanding. The reason being, these devices are used to conduct diagnosis on human beings for deciding on their futuristic course of treating an ailment by the radiologists and malfunctioning of these devices needs an immediate attention for which the service professionals must be ready to travel any-time and any-day. It is to be noted that organization invests money on recruitment and placement of Service Engineers for offering time-centric technical services to the end users. Most of the organizations follow lean structure through which service professionals are permitted to operate from their respective home towns. In return organization expects the service professional's hard core productivity on the field that would create a pool of highly satisfied customers, as brand ambassadors for the medical services industry. The productivity of service professional is the most difficult part to measure and act as the service professionals are not expected to earn revenue. Hence, measure of their performance is mainly based on quality time spend on services by them on the field in attending the faulty Medical Equipments at user ends. M/s Cura Health care is an organization offering Products and Services in the Health Care industry for more than a decade, which has envisaged the need for improving the productivity of them to be the doyens in the Medical Devices Industry. Keeping in view the future demands of industry, Cura has exclusively employed service professionals constituting more than 50 percent of its total workforces. The present research will focus on studying the existing system of estimating service professional's utilization and understanding the usage of simple statistical methods for base lining the current productivity levels. Moreover, the research will also recommend an appropriate statistical approach for productivity measures and means of applying the statistical inferences for multiple decision making process, which may not only be useful for improving the service professionals. productivity but also to set the basis for motivating and appraising high performance workforces within an industry.