SHASHWAT GUPTA RAY
Inspired by her mother’s urgent need for surgery and the fi nancial challenges her family faced, Kavita Rathod, a Class X student at Union High School, Chimbel, along with her two schoolmates, has co-developed a healthcare mobile application named ‘PRAN’ (Life), which serves as a comprehensive resource for patients by connecting them with hospitals, medical com panions and financial donors who can help meet treatment expenses. The app also provides in formation on affordable ac commodation for patients’ relatives. The project will be support ed by ‘Visit Health’, a major Del hi-based health-tech start-up with a turnover exceeding Rs 350 crore and a market valuation of over Rs 2,000 crore. “The idea for this app originated from a personal experi ence when my mother required urgent surgery. Faced with a cost of Rs 2 lakh for the surgery, which was difficult for our family to afford, we shifted her to Goa Medical College for free treatment.
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This experience highlighted the finan cial and navigational challenges that middle-class and un derprivileged families face while seeking healthcare, par ticularly in arranging medical finances and finding suitable hospitals,” Kavita told O Heraldo. In response to these challenges, Kavita and her team de cided to create a solution. “We were encouraged by Venkatesh Prabhu sir at SCERT, who taught us coding beyond our school syllabus. We de veloped a prototype using Pictoblox and entered it in the Codeavour competition to showcase our idea,” she said. Kavita’s teammate, Upasana Kumari, a Class IX student at Union High School, said the system operates through a unified registration process. “Volunteers interested in serving as companions can reg ister through the app. Once their profiles are verified, they become available to assist patients.
Currently, the project exists as a functional prototype developed using MIT App Inventor and is compatible with Android devices,” she said. Her classmate, Dilkush Kumar, whose interest in robotics led him to join the project, assisted Kavita and Upasana by sourcing critical information on hospitals, healthcare pro viders and companion donors. “I provided support during the development and coding phases of the app by supplying the necessary information to build the algorithms,” he said. Dileep Kashinath Vaze, a mathematics teacher at Union High School and the students’ mentor for the project, said the team has already achieved significant milestones at the state and national levels, including representing India at Codeav our, an international AI, coding and robotics competition in Jakarta, where Upasana received the ‘Girl in STEM’ award. “Following our recent selection for a two-month incuba tion programme in Goa and Delhi, we are eager to trans form this prototype into a formal business venture.
Since the students are minors, we plan to include their parents as shareholders in the start-up,” Vaze said. Impressed by the project, Ambassador, Vibrant Goa Foundation, and Chief Advisor of ‘Visit Health’, Veenay Ku mar, expressed support for the students during the recent ly held Ideabaaz Start-up Goa Day 2026 Grand Finale. “The kids have developed an important health-tech ap plication. This project holds significant potential for a state like Goa by bridging the gap between limited resources and a large customer base,” Kumar said. “We intend to provide both financial backing and any technical assistance required throughout the development process after a thorough assessment of the project,” he said.
