Three School Kids Try To Solve Healthcare Problem In Rural India With AI

India isn't the most advanced country when it comes to healthcare. Sure, metros and urban parts of the nation have access to state-of-the-art hospitals with skilled doctors; however, the same cannot be said for the rural areas, which comprise a major chunk of our population as well as the nation.

Reuters

However, in a recent 'AI for Better India' hackathon organised by tech leaders IBM along with CBSE affiliated schools in Delhi-NCR, a group of teenagers bagged the first prize for their app HEALTHHub -- an AI health kit designed to offer basic healthcare to people in rural areas without doctors with the help of AI.

Their concept, developed under the guidance of IBM mentor Nethra Ravindran, harnessed the brilliance of AI in the form of a one-stop kiosk to allow people in the rural areas get proper treatment without the presence of the doctor, as well as avail other medical facilities, should a need arise.

We got to interact with the team of students -- Yash Pandey, Akanksha Rani and Ansh Ahuja from grade 12 of Apeejay School, in Panchsheel Park, New Delhi who designed this award-winning app and understand what made them motivated to create such an app, as well as the challenges they faced along the way.

Akanksha Rani / Yash Pandey / Anksh Ahuja

What convinced them to make such an app

The team shared how they're aware of the current plight of people in the rural areas and how they wanted to help them, ¡°We are well aware that health is most important in all aspects of life and the majority of India's population residing in the rural areas have minimal or no access to healthcare services and we always wanted to do something about it.¡±

They added, ¡°In rural areas, people rarely get a diagnosis due to lack of qualified doctors and general awareness. Long distances make ambulances hard to get along with people having to search for hours for hospitals, making this a curse in case of emergencies. With HEALTHub our focus is on providing centralised access to all components of healthcare at nearly 5 percent the cost of a hospital.¡±

Tech making a difference

We were curious to learn what tech they were using under the hood to bring this project to life. The team shared, ¡°Our hardware-based HEALTHub is the first of its kind solution working for the rural people and can act as the Health Centre for any area. Our machine offers among many other features, an intelligent diagnosis with a self-improving mechanism, therefore reducing the need of human intervention and releasing huge pressure from the healthcare sector at a minimal cost for any number of patients.¡±

IBM

They added, HEALTHub makes use of Artificial Intelligence for the good of rural areas and millions of poor Indians. We are combining the latest AI-based technologies - like IBM Watson Visual Recognition among several others - for making complex processes accessible in multiple languages and for anyone, anywhere as an overall solution to the healthcare problem.¡±

Challenges while developing a solution for rural India

Of course, the target audience for this application are people who aren't as tech-savvy as the urban city folk of the nation. However, the team already factored in this challenge and had tools handy to circumvent these issues,

¡°Building a pan-India solution, especially in the healthcare sector, poses huge problems of language and accessibility. Remote areas bring the obstacles of network, understandability and lack of computer knowledge to solve, which we have tried to address through various AI-powered technologies and a huge amount of data. These challenges also give us an opportunity and potential to bring about a good change in the lives of millions of Indians. Our India-centric solution, thus, has the potential to bring about a revolution in the healthcare sector of India.¡±

Working during the pandemic

These kids have worked on this solution at a time when the whole world was shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, however, despite that the team shared how they had people to support them to complete this task, ¡°IBM's mentors and webinars helped us to grow our knowledge on AI programming, knowledge of the healthcare sector and hardware. Despite the unfortunate pandemic, we were able to complete almost all aspects of our solution only through the support provided by IBM, our teacher Mrs. Mukta Amba and our mentors from 1M1B. Our parents are encouraging us to continue on this journey of using technology for good.¡±

The motivating factor that pushes them forward

The team revealed how they receive their motivation thinking that HEALTHHub really has the potential to make people's lives easier, Knowing the huge potential of our project definitely gives us satisfaction, but we know that there is a long way to go. The idea of helping even one person through HEALTHub, who could not have received the required medical assistance on time otherwise, constantly keeps us motivated to continue working towards its betterment and increasing its accessibility to reach as many remote areas as possible.¡±

Reuters

They added, ¡°We will remain persistent till the time no one in the rural areas will have to ask, ¡°How will an ambulance get here?¡± or ¡°Where can I find a hospital?¡± or ¡°Is there any pharmacy here?¡± All Of them will only have to ask ¡°Where's the nearest HEALTHub?¡±

Tech literacy for the future

This application, even though still in a very nascent stage, was developed by a group of teenagers from 12th grade. It only goes to show the potential kids have today to deliver unique solutions to help better people's lives.

Today, the CBSE board has collaborated with IBM to make this tech push on a much broader scale, in academics, encouraging kids to adopt and embrace technology. Dr Biswajit Saha, Director, Training and Skill at CBSE explained, ¡°Educating children on the new-age technologies that will drive the future is very important today. Science fiction stories of the previous generation are becoming a reality today only because of the participation of the youth as creators using technology. Irrespective of a child's interest, we strongly believe that it is important for them to be literate and aware of the technology that will bring about a fundamental change in the world in future.¡±

Google

IBM Fellow - AI, Director and CTO India for IBM AI Applications, Shalini Kapoor, shared how this is helping kids be better prepared for their future careers in AI and technology, ¡°Through initiatives like Hackathons, workshops and others, providing practical hands-on learning as well as providing avenues for collaboration at a national and international stage, underpinned by recognizing students's learning achievements is another tenet of our association with CBSE.¡±

She added, ¡°Thus our overarching aim is to create opportunities for students to leverage their knowledge through a more hands-on approach while providing them the confidence and motivation to build a better world for themselves and stay connected with the careers and the market requirements of tomorrow.¡±