IIT Madras Startup Wins AI Hackathon and Deploys Prescription Tool

Plenome, an artificial intelligence startup based out of IIT Madras, has won BHASHINI’s all-India AI hackathon for developing Ashwin AI, a voice-based healthcare transcription software. Following the win, the technology has been deployed at AIIMS New Delhi, bringing automated prescription generation closer to doctors in government hospitals who may soon no longer need to write or type prescriptions manually.

The software was developed to tackle BHASHINI’s multilingual AI-based healthcare transcription and service delivery challenge by utilizing voice-to-text technologies to streamline medical documentation. Plenome earned Rs 35 lakh in prize money to support piloting the technology after successfully clearing three evaluation stages over the past 12 months.

Ashwin AI functions by analyzing conversations between doctors and patients to generate prescriptions and monitor patient health. The software is aimed at alleviating the burden on public healthcare workers who face high patient volumes that hinder note-taking and routine follow-up care.

Prabhu Rajagopal, director in charge of the IIT Madras Zanzibar campus and founder of Plenome, highlighted the practical benefits of the system for busy medical professionals.

"Doctors at govt hospitals struggle to take notes or do follow-ups due to high volume of patients. With this software, they can generate prescriptions, send medicines to patients, track their health outcomes and plan for recovery," Rajagopal said.

To ensure the software performs reliably in healthcare settings across the country, the developers tailored the platform to recognize complex medical terminology across a broad range of regional languages.

"We have built very good specifics to understand the medical terminology. The software can cover most of the Indian languages and produce texts with 90% to 95% accuracy," Rajagopal added.

Through its deployment at AIIMS New Delhi, the software allows doctors to generate prescriptions, dispatch medicines directly to patients, track long-term health outcomes, and formulate recovery plans.