A Health Tablet for Rural India
Meet Kanav Kahol, another talented NRI who came up with a useful innovation. Except, in this case, Kahol is no longer an NRI. After leaving his teaching job at Arizona State University, this biomedical engineer returned to India for good. He now works in the area of affordable technology for a public-private initiative called the Public Health Foundation of India.
When Kahol discovered the need for quick diagnoses, especially in the rural hinterlands, he designed a health tablet that’s an all-in-one “smart” device for medics. Why is this Swasthya Slate, as he calls it, so helpful? For starters, it’s portable and easy to operate. It checks your body temperature, blood pressure and blood sugar, tests the quality of water, conducts ECG, and does diabetes screening. The accuracy is well above 99 percent. What’s more, the roving health workers who use this wireless tablet will be able to take notes and store patient records, which can later be uploaded to—or downloaded from—a central system. And best of all, the price is reasonable.
Not all the features have been incorporated yet, but Kahol expects it to be commercially viable in the near future.Enjoyed reading Khabar magazine? Subscribe to Khabar and get a full digital copy of this Indian-American community magazine.
