A three-member team of India’s premier Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur (West Bengal) is making waves nationwide with its revolutionary wireless sleep assistant SleepDoc+. The team of Laxmi Kant Tiwari, Alok Mishra and Anurag Verma bested 12 teams at the grand finale to be crowned champions of the inaugural Accenture Innovation Challenge 2017, staged in Bangalore on November 28. Each member of Team IIT-Kgp was awarded an all-expenses-paid trip to The Dock, Accenture’s research and incubation hub in Dublin, Ireland. Organised by the Bangalore-based Accenture Solutions Pvt. Ltd — a subsidiary of the globally renowned management consultancy and IT professional services company Accenture Plc — to nurture the spirit of innovation among college students, the competition based on the ‘Disruptive Businesses’ and ‘Tech for Good’ themes attracted participation of over 13,000 students (4,000-plus teams) from 900 higher ed institutions countrywide. A device which works on wireless radar technology using a mobile phone display monitor, SleepDoc+ records vital physiological and environmental parameters such as respiration rate, pulse, temperature, humidity and air quality. Based on live data monitored over a specific time period, the device analyses a range of sleep disorders and suggests lifestyle changes to the user by using its intelligent voice interactive system. “We ideated the project in January 2017, bearing in mind the rise in sleep disorders plaguing the current generation. In the Innovation Challenge, our challenge was to design the final prototype working model within two months,” says team spokesperson Laxmi Kant Tiwari, who mobilised Rs.10 lakh for developing the innovation. After graduating from IIT-Kgp in December last year, the team has been focused on formally launching SleepDoc+ in the market. “We promoted a start-up named mBreath Technologies Pvt. Ltd last May. Since then, we have bagged five business innovation awards, the prize money of which we have invested in further product development. For proof and validation of our innovation, we have filed three patents with the intent of marketing it. Our long-term plan is to capture the medical monitoring and diagnostics market through continuous innovation,” enthuses Tiwari. Wind in your sails! Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)
