Upchar AI – Multilingual WhatsApp-based Healthcare Assistant

✨ Inspiration

India’s healthcare system is overloaded, and patients often struggle with long queues, confusing department names, and manual registration. We wanted to solve this problem by creating a WhatsApp-based AI receptionist that understands natural language and simplifies hospital interactions. The inspiration came from seeing how widely WhatsApp is used in India, even in rural areas, making it the perfect channel for healthcare accessibility.

💡 What it does

• Patients describe symptoms or requests in any language (English, Hindi, Marathi, Kannada, etc.).
  
• The AI understands intent, maps symptoms to the right department, and books appointments.
  
• Handles registration, FAQs, and scheduling automatically.
  
• Provides confirmation messages on WhatsApp — no apps, no complicated menus.
  

🛠️ How we will build it

• Integrated WhatsApp via Twilio API for patient interaction.
  
• Used IBM Granite Models on watsonx.ai for multilingual symptom understanding and RAG over hospital data.
  
• Designed an agentic workflow using IBM’s Agent Development Kit (ADK):
  
  • Receptionist Agent (main orchestrator).
    
  • Triage Agent (symptoms → department).
    
  • Scheduler Agent (doctor slot booking).
    
  • Support Agent (hospital info, directions, payments).
    

🏆 Accomplishments that we will be proud of

• Built a fully functional multilingual hospital receptionist AI.
  
• Showcased how agentic AI can replace repetitive manual work.
  
• Created a solution that is accessible to everyone through WhatsApp, no extra apps needed.
  
• Successfully integrated IBM Granite + ADK into a real-world healthcare workflow.
  

📚 What we will learned

• How to design agentic AI systems that plan, reason, and act.
  
• The importance of multilingual AI in India.
  
• Hands-on experience with IBM Granite models, ADK, and watsonx Orchestrate.
  
• Balancing AI automation with compliance and governance in sensitive domains like healthcare.
  

Built With

• google-calendar
• ibm-adk
• ibm-granite
• ibm-watson
• kaggle
• nextjs
• node.js
• python
• supabase