4 New Innovations Set to Change How Indians Visit Doctors

CEO Abhay Agarwal says, “Just as ATMs decentralized banking by allowing people to perform basic transactions without visiting a bank branch, health ATMs aim to decentralize preventive healthcare. This is designed to make preventive healthcare accessible everywhere, reduce hospital overload, and increase public awareness about health risks.”

Health ATM

The Health ATM can conduct a series of screening tests, including 19 related to general health, nine infectious diseases rapid tests, 10 urine rapid tests, two auscultations, which is the clinical technique of listening to internal body sounds — primarily heart, lungs, and intestines — using a stethoscope to diagnose health conditions, seven cardiac tests, two diabetes tests, two ear tests, two eye tests, four pulmonary function test, anaemia, oral care and a kidney test. Agarwal claims accuracy comparable to laboratory results (90–95% accuracy). “Over 40 health parameters can be measured in about 10 minutes, with only five blood tests required, and results are instantly delivered via WhatsApp or printed on site. Non-invasive tests such as ECG and spirometry are performed quickly, making the system fast and convenient for users”, he adds.

A file manager for cancer survivors: The journey of OncoVault, an AI-powered cancer report management tool, began when a co-founder of BigOHealth, Shubham Shreyas, witnessed his colleague’s mother being diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. “OncoVault allows patients to upload scans or photos of their medical reports without manually entering details. The app’s AI identifies the type of report, extracts key information like test dates and patient details and organises all records chronologically,” explains Shreyas.

BigO Health: Shubham Shreyas. Express photo

A standout feature of the platform is the one-pager summarising a patient’s treatment history over years into a concise format, including links to all reports and analyses. This is particularly useful when patients seek a second opinion, allowing doctors to quickly review prior treatments and make informed decisions. The app also supports audio input, enabling patients to record symptoms or details that arise later. “In cancer treatment, patient information is often scattered across multiple places…sometimes the hospital does not have all the patient data — but the patient does,” says Shreyas.

Fitness startup for athletes: Athletes in remote areas, with limited access to coaching infrastructure and sports medicine, can record videos and have their kinograms or “time-lapse” videos of their motion assessed by an AI platform for injury and coaching guidance.

Called Bhargati, it has been founded by ex Army officer Amit Oberoi, conceptualised at IIT Delhi and developed in Australia by a former IIT Delhi student, Amit Gupta, with conceptual support from Professor Brijesh Lal. Using simple video recordings and reference cones placed on the ground, the platform creates a kinogram, a skeletal overlay of the athlete’s movements. It evaluates joint angles, stride length, ground contact time, and other biomechanical metrics, offering a level of detail previously only available in lab-based systems.

“It doesn’t just track steps or heart rate. It analyses how an athlete moves — detecting poor technique, inefficient strides, or joint misalignment — and generates reports to reduce injury risk and improve performance,” says Oberoi. It has already been used successfully by professional athletes and Olympians in Australia. Beyond athletics, Bhargati can help in gait analysis and mobility issues of the elderly.

Mental health platform: At a time when conversations around mental health are steadily gaining urgency, a young founder from National Institute of Technology Vellore is turning personal struggle into technological innovation. Arihant Bhardwaj shared how his own battles with stress and mental health challenges — along with those of his co-founders — sparked the creation of Tranquil AI, a mental health AI platform.

“We were trying to solve something we ourselves were struggling with,” says Bhardwaj about his platform that is tailored to students dealing with academic pressure, anxiety, burnout and emotional isolation. “It combines mood tracking, guided journaling, meditation support, sleep tools and an AI-driven chat feature designed to help users manage stress and anxiety. Unlike generic chatbots, the platform integrates user-consented inputs such as mood logs and journal entries to create increasingly personalized interactions over time. If you want to vent, it listens. If you want comfort, it responds. If you want structured guidance, it adapts,” says Bhardwaj.