New Delhi: As the age of the internet trickles into all systems of society including education and medicine, it produces surprising and inspiring results. A 17-year-old boy studying at DPS RK Puram perhaps is a perfect portrayal of a how the internet has prompted the younger generation to contribute to society using the resources that they are surrounded by. Shaurya Jain was interested in computer science from a young age. When he was in class 9, he decided to take on some Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in order to learn coding. Using this knowledge, over the next two years he managed to build an app called InstaMed Plus that has been vastly successful. "In 2016, my sister fell ill. The doctors took a lot of time to diagnose the disease because her past medical records were missing. That’s when I realized that we need a way to upload and quickly access our medical history and so I built an app which would do just that," says Jain. The app is interlinked to a website of the same name. For more complicated process of linking the app with the website, Jain took help from his cousin who is an IIT-Delhi student. Users can create a profile and upload all medical records including X-rays, prescriptions and vaccines, which will be stored in a cloud and can be accessed and shared through the phone or computer. Even before launching this app, Jain was already a popular student at school due to his participation and wins in various national and international level competitions for robotics. His skills even earned him the title as the president of his school’s robotics club. "Working on the app has not only boosted my reputation at school, but it has also given me a sense of direction in life. I wish to pursue computer science for higher studies so that I can learn about artificial intelligence and machine learning and implement that in the app," Jain says, adding that he wishes to pursue such courses in the US. "I want to go to a university which would put less focus on the marks we score and more on what we do and produce. I may not try out for IITs because they would want me to learn physics and chemistry along with computer science. I’d rather study where I can put all my efforts in one niche," he says. The boy already has plans to develop the app for a more personalised experience with reminders, aids for special needs users and artificial intelligence to pull in useful and related content while reducing the carbon footprint by making it all digital. All these plans have thankfully not hindered Jain’s conventional progress in studies at school. He scored an 8.8 CGPA in his class 10 board exams which were conducted by the CBSE. When asked about how he managed to balance between working on the app, learning how to code and study for board exams, Jain said it is all about "knowing when to do what". "I spend about eight hours a day on the computer and one or two hours making robots every day. Yes, it does take a lot of time from the day, but it does not get in the way of school work. I complete what needs to be done in syllabus within school hours, and spend my free time on the things I love, instead of wasting time on TV or movies," says Jain. Unlike students of his age, Jain does not go for coaching/tuitions and prefers self-study. When there is a need to put in extra hours to study things within school syllabus, he asks his parents to lock away his laptop so as to keep him from getting distracted. "Coding is something I live for. It is like oxygen to me. So no matter where I go and what I study, this will always be my priority," says Jain, who is currently in class 12 and has taken to studying AI and machine learning courses online in order to find ways to improve the app.
At 17, this Delhi schoolboy designed a mobile app to digitize medical records
- by Rinku
- November 02, 2017 2 minutes
Schoolboy