What the hospital was dealing with
Over 600 million rural Indians live in villages without functional primary care clinics. For any health concern, villagers in pilot districts were travelling 2–4 hours each way to the nearest town — losing a full day's wages, paying auto-rickshaw fares, and often still receiving generic advice due to rushed consultations.
The alternative was to consult the local pharmacy — which often resulted in self-medication without any diagnostic basis. Minor but serious conditions like hypertension, early diabetes, and respiratory infections went undetected for months because the barrier to formal consultation was too high.
How Goolk AI approached it
KiaoM is a low-cost physical health kiosk designed for deployment inside existing village pharmacies — using infrastructure that already exists in the community.
Hardware Stack: Each kiosk has a Raspberry Pi-based tablet touchscreen connected to three calibrated IoT medical sensors — a BP cuff, pulse oximeter, and digital thermometer — all connected via Bluetooth. Vitals are captured and logged automatically.
Voice AI in 5 Languages: A custom voice AI guides users through a structured symptom interview in their native language. The AI understands spoken Kannada, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, and Marathi — including regional dialects common in rural Karnataka.
Triage & Doctor Connection: The AI generates a structured symptom summary. If triage indicates clinical review, the patient is connected to a registered doctor via live video within minutes — at a cost subsidised below ₹50 per consult.
Digital Health Record: Every consult generates a digital record, delivered to the patient via WhatsApp and stored in an ABDM-compatible health locker.
Measured results at 90 days
Across 12 village deployments in 3 Karnataka districts, KiaoM has completed 4,500+ triage consults since January 2025. Average symptom triage time is under 3 minutes. 62% of patients who use the kiosk would not have sought medical advice otherwise.
Of patients triaged, 38% were flagged for follow-up doctor consultation — most for conditions that, if undetected, would have required emergency hospitalisation within 6 months. The kiosk has been particularly effective in identifying undiagnosed hypertension and diabetes in adults aged 35–60.
KiaoM is structured as a subsidised public health initiative with Goolk AI providing the technology layer.
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What we built it with
How we delivered it
Hardware engineering & sensor integration
Designed the kiosk hardware stack for rural conditions — low-power, high-humidity tolerance, and reliable on 2G/3G connectivity. Integrated BP, SpO2, and thermometer via Bluetooth.
Voice AI & language model training
Trained speech models on 10,000+ labelled utterances per language across Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, Marathi, and Hindi. Tested with 200 rural participants before deployment.
Pilot deployment & doctor network
Installed kiosks in 12 villages across 3 districts. Established the doctor connection loop with 8 telemedicine-certified GPs. Trained pharmacy staff on kiosk support.
Goolk AI built a solution that villagers can interact with naturally using their own voice, in their own language. We are seeing people access medical guidance for the first time in their lives. This is what technology should do.Project CoordinatorKiaoM Foundation, Karnataka
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