Every time we fell sick as a child, our mothers and grandmothers had some home remedy that they would quickly whip up in the kitchen and force us to take, pinching our noses. We may see it as an old and outdated practice while opting for allopathic alternatives today, but we cannot deny the fact that there was something about those home remedies that worked like magic.

Two 11-year olds from the village of Thavani, Thiruvannamalai district of Tamil Nadu wanted to find a way to encourage city dwellers and the younger generation to try the time-tested home remedies available to everyone for minor health ailments.

(Left to right) Sivaguru and Logeswari.

Logeswari and Sivaguru observed that the people in their village community and their acquaintances in the city had developed an unhealthy habit of taking strong medicines even for minor health issues. The lack of awareness about home remedies was one of the causes. While discussing the problem at home, one of their grandmothers said, “Back in our day, quality food not only improved everyone’s immune system but also acted as medicine!” They realized that the solution to the problem already existed, it just needed to be made available easily.

They decided on building a chatbot as it would make their solution scalable, thereby impacting not just their community, but also other communities across the country. “Easy access to the solution” and “ease of use” were other important factors they considered. As a good number people have a smartphone and are eager to chat, they built the chatbot!

A sample chat with “Capsule.” You can check out their chatbot – “Capsule” here.

The chatbot being an online solution, they shared it via Facebook, Whatsapp, and Instagram. A total of 72 reaches occurred in one week . They got feedback from people of different age groups living in different geographical areas. Here are some of the feedback.

“The response from the chatbot is very quick”, says Shriram Alwar B from Velammal Vidyalaya, Chennai.

“Chatbot is informative and helpful. But this can be further enhanced by adding response buttons, instead of asking the user to type the responses”, says Rashmi Manavalan, Engineer at Cisco Systems Pvt Ltd, Bengaluru.

“CAPSULE is so good that it provides apt information on how to take care, and the remedies based on asking various questions to find out the real cause. It is very helpful as there is no moment to lose in getting the remedies we need. Good job!” – By Nandhini Natarajan, Systems Engineer at Infosys Trivandrum.

“The chatbot looks interesting. I shared it with my friends. They too liked it. When I got to know that it has been built through IBM Watson, I also learned how to build a chatbot using IBM Watson. This not only benefits the society but also encourages the younger generations to learn new technologies” – By Praveen Baskar, Student at PSG College of Arts and Sciences.

Logeswari and Sivaguru intend to conduct biweekly communal meetings with the elders in their community, to gather extensive data on home remedies for various minor ailments. These will then be fed into the chatbot. They are also exploring the options of integrating the chatbot with Messenger, Whatsapp, and Instagram.

Logeswari and Sivaguru (Right) with their mentor Manthiravalli Krishnan in Rubaru 2020

They participated in the National Student Innovation Challenge (NSIC) 2019-2020 under the mentorship of Manthiravalli Krishnan, a Software Engineer with Cisco Systems Pvt Ltd, Bengaluru.

On February 7, 2020 they won an award for their project, at Bangalore in eVidyaloka’s flagship event – RUBARU. This year, the same project was submitted for the International Changemaker Olympiad, and won an Innovation Award.

Source : International Changemaker Olympiad Facebook Page

You can check out their chatbot – “Capsule” here.

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