Ausodhyatmika- A common man launches an app to democratize information about medicines
Tuesday July 07, 2015,
4 min Read
“I belong to a village near Varanasi. My family is in the services. Service to the nation is of great importance to me. I feel a responsibility towards eradicating corruption from our society. The police, healthcare and the judicial system are the top three most corrupt departments in India,” says Krishnakant Tiwari, who identifies as the common Indian man. But he has launched an Android app, Ausodhyatmika, which he says is a social service app. It provides details about medicines, to equip common people of India with medicinal knowledge, thereby helping to curb corruption in the healthcare sector.
Krishnakant’s father is a retired Army man. Currently, their family has three Army officers serving the nation, and honesty is a virtue that runs deep in the family. “I am a very honest person, and have suffered a lot due to honesty. This suffering has made me very tough and brought me closer to God. My vision is to empower the common people of India with handy knowledge that is potent enough to make the system work efficiently, thereby making India a great nation,” he says. An electronic engineer by degree, Krishnakant works as a software developer in Mindtree Ltd, Bengaluru. It was in his spare time that he developed this app.
Krishnakant has collected data from various authentic sources. “Even medical portals have reviewed my information, and I can vouch for the authenticity of the information,” he adds. Ausodhyatmika provides the fundamental details of a medicine such as its Name, Constituent(s), Medicine Type, Unit, Price per Unit and Manufacturer. It also has tabs providing the ‘Symptoms’, ‘Conflicts’, ‘Warnings’ & ‘Side-effects’ associated with a medicine, as well as ‘Alternate Medicine/Substitutes’, based on the constituent composition of medicine. Search results are based on price in ascending order. The app does not ask for any user information, but requires an Internet connection to process search results. “I have details of more than one lakh medicines, and the algorithm keeps updating the database as per new arrivals,” says Krishnakant.
The idea for the app came about in the middle of June 2014, when Krishnakant saw a news report on NDTV 24/7, wherein a nexus between doctors and pharmaceutical companies was exposed by journalists. These companies bribe doctors in various ways so they will prescribe medicines of higher costs to patients. “I felt the ‘trust’ which patients have in doctors was getting exploited. So I decided to empower people with knowledge of medicines, so that they could judge the best possible medicine available in the market, as per affordability,” says Krishnakant.
A one-man-army at the moment, he launched Ausodhyatmika v 1.0 on the 30th April, 2015. Then, he did some enhancements based on user feedback, and uploaded version 1.1 on 10th June 2015. “Ausodhyatmika is a totally social service application and does not indulge in any kind of business online or offline. It does not generate any revenue. Ausodhyatmika neither sells medicines, nor does it offer any kind of discounts or medicine preferences,” he adds.
The response to the app has been great and it has given Krishnakant a lot of encouragement to make it better. Technology is being used in every sector, and healthcare is no exception. Practo is one of the biggest success stories in the digital healthcare domain. The likes of Surgerica and Credihealth are also doing great work. 2014 was a great year for healthcare startups in India, with all investors upping their tempo. Krishnakant’s app is small but a very important addition to new innovations coming out from India. “My vision is to empower the common people of India with the kind of knowledge that will help curb corruption, and help India become a super-power nation,” concludes Krishnakant.
Website: Ausodhyatmika