India wears the title of ‘Diabetes Capital’ in the world. A bulk of the diabetes patients in India, that is an estimated 50 million, suffer from type-2 diabetes. What is even worse is that type-2 diabetes is highly prevalent in the younger population. 20% of Indians above the age of 20 and 35-40% above the age of 60 suffer from this diabetes. 

The traditional methods of diagnosis have two ways to detect the onset of diabetes. One is using a questionnaire and the other is by using blood tests. The previous tool is highly unreliable and unscientific. While the latter is bad at noticing early signs of chronic diseases and assessing the individual’s risk factor of developing such diseases. 

To change the delay in diagnosis and offer the patients a chance at early detection, Gayathri Choda decided to start Aarca Research. The venture created an innovative way to detect early signs of such diseases. They relied on screening the patient with an FDA approved thermal camera. The 3-minute long video would then be checked by using machine learning (ML) and AI to assess the potential health risks. 

With their Intelligent Health Risk Assessment (IHRA), they can rate a person’s risk of developing type-2 diabetes, hypertension and other diseases on a scale from 1 to 10. Their innovation helped them get selected by Telangana’s incubator, We Hub. They also received a pre-seed fund last year. They received Data Innovation Bazaar Award and NASSCOM Emerge 50 Award too.

Such early detection can help India’s working population to engage in precautions to avoid diabetes and other comorbidities like heart diseases, neuropathy, high blood pressure, stroke, sleep apnea, dementia, kidney and eye damages and more. Early warning can also help them notice lifestyle habits like inactivity and unhealthy diet and try to change them. 

Will Aarca Research help India’s youth secure a healthy life and India’s economy to secure a healthy working population?