Two research scholars from IIT Guwahati have gained entry to the global Charm Health Innovation Challenge for “developing” a device capable of “remotely” carrying out primary health check-up, a solution which could help reach a large rural population.

Mitali Basak and Shirsendu Mitra teamed up and participated in the competition under the category of “Student Innovators” and submitted an idea of a benchtop digital setup integrated with an algorithm to record initial screening parameters like body temperature, pulse rate, eye and tongue analysis of a patient remotely, the institute has said.

Further, a robust algorithm along with cloud interfacing is expected to enable the device to “store” large volumes of health data for future benefit.

Charm Health Innovation challenge is a platform for innovators and entrepreneurs to showcase their innovative technological solutions and new business models of healthcare, AI (artificial intelligence)-assisted patient care and remote monitoring incorporating AI/VR (virtual reality) and NLP (natural language processing), wearables and devices. The challenge is organised by two California- based organisations — Charm Health and iValley.

“A situation like Covid demands human interactions to be as minimal as possible. In view of this, the current innovation serves a potential tool for healthcare management remotely, taking care of physical as well as social distancing norms. The device developed by the scholars is capable of remotely doing primary health check-up,” the IIT said.

Basak, a third-year PhD scholar, Centre for Nanotechnology, IIT Guwahati, along with Mitra, former PhD scholar, department of chemical engineering, IIT Guwahati (presently an early career fellow at IIT Gandhinagar), are working on the prototype which is expected to be ready within the next four months. This innovation challenge includes a cash prize of $2,500 for the two top winners.

The winners of this challenge will be decided after the submission of a prototype based on the proposed innovation. Apart from this, once the winning innovation is fully developed, its commercialisation will be taken forward by the organisers.