Sahara

A Multilingual Voice AI Ecosystem for Elderly Patients & Everyday Healthcare

Sahara is a multilingual voice AI ecosystem for elderly patients and everyday users. It works as a daily health helper and transforms into an emergency lifeline the moment something goes wrong.

The patient only has to talk. If they can't, a family member or anyone nearby can take over.

Built for the Agora Voice AI Hackathon 2026, Sahara was conceptualized, designed, and built in just 3 days.

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THE PROBLEM

Many elderly people in India live with high blood pressure, diabetes, or heart conditions and spend long hours alone.

During a heart attack, stroke, or fall:

• They may not be able to unlock a phone.

• They may not be able to type.

• Family members may find out too late.

• When help finally arrives, nobody may know the patient's medical history.

• The most important first hour can be wasted.

On normal days, there are smaller but equally important problems:

• Forgetting medicines

• Difficulty using English-first health apps

• Language barriers

• Overpaying for branded medicines

• Not knowing which government health schemes they are eligible for

Healthcare should not become harder simply because someone is elderly, alone, or not comfortable with technology.

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OUR SOLUTION

One voice assistant for everyday care + emergencies.

Sahara lets patients communicate naturally in Hindi, Hinglish, English, and more languages, with multilingual voice support powered by Murf AI TTS.

There is:

No typing.
No complicated menus.
No switching between apps.

The entire experience revolves around the patient, with Sahara and its tool-calling ecosystem working around them.

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WHAT SAHARA DOES

🗣️ 1. Natural Voice Conversations

Sahara talks like a person.

• Real-time two-way voice

• Patients can interrupt the assistant

• Conversation context is remembered

• Previous information can be used even in a later call

• Supports Hindi, Hinglish, English, and more

The patient simply speaks instead of navigating an app.

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🛡️ 2. Type-Safe AI Health Decisions with Laya

Health decisions cannot depend on unpredictable free-form AI responses.

Sahara uses Laya for type-safe AI decisions.

Every health decision produces:

• A fixed, checked response

• A confidence score

• A structured output

This means a wrong AI-generated sentence cannot directly trigger a critical action.

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❤️ 3. Hospital-Standard Risk Scoring

Sahara evaluates:

• Blood pressure

• Pulse

• Oxygen saturation

• Blood sugar

• Symptoms

The system uses NEWS2 (National Early Warning Score 2) principles to classify risk.

Risk Levels

🟢 GREEN — Stable
🟡 YELLOW — Needs attention
🟠 ORANGE — High risk
🔴 RED — Emergency

A single dangerous reading can be enough to trigger a RED emergency state.

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🚨 4. Emergency Alert Chain

When the system detects a RED emergency:

1. The caregiver and next contact are alerted.

2. If nobody responds, Sahara continues trying the next contacts.

3. The system retries every 30 seconds.

4. Backup emergency alerts are triggered if nobody responds.

5. A large one-tap 108 button remains available on the patient's screen.

The goal is simple:

Don't let one missed call become a missed rescue.

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🏥 5. Doctor-Style Emergency Handoff

When an emergency happens, responders and family shouldn't have to reconstruct the situation themselves.

Sahara automatically creates a concise SBAR-style handoff summary containing:

• What happened

• Relevant medical history

• Current risk

• What should happen next

This gives caregivers and responders immediate context.

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👁️ 6. "Are You Awake?" Emergency Check

During an active emergency, Sahara checks on the patient every 60 seconds.

It asks:

"Are you awake?"

If the patient becomes unresponsive or stops responding:

→ Sahara automatically sends an urgent WhatsApp alert.

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👨‍👩‍👧 7. Family & Caregiver Connection

Sahara connects the patient with their trusted care network.

Caregiver features

• Caregiver pairing

• Live caregiver emergency screen

• WhatsApp emergency alerts

• Unresponsive alerts

• Emergency-resolved notifications

• Daily medicine reports

• Care history

• Vitals trends

Family members can stay informed without constantly calling the patient.

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💊 8. Everyday Medicine Assistance

Sahara isn't only for emergencies.

Patients can use their voice to:

• Ask about today's medicines

• Say "I took it" to log a medicine

• Set reminders such as "Remind me at 8 PM"

• Save BP readings

• Save sugar readings

• Track their health history

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💰 9. Cheaper Medicine Discovery

Branded medicines can be expensive.

Sahara helps patients compare medicines with cheaper Jan Aushadhi / government generic alternatives.

It currently covers 43 medicines, with live lookup available for additional medicines.

The goal is to help patients understand:

"Is there a cheaper generic alternative to what I'm buying?"

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🇮🇳 10. Government Healthcare Schemes

Sahara explains government healthcare schemes in simple language, including:

Ayushman Bharat

It explains the scheme and its coverage, including treatment benefits of up to ₹5 lakh where applicable.

It also covers 12 additional government health schemes, explained in simple Hindi.

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📍 11. Nearby Healthcare Discovery

Through voice, users can ask Sahara to find:

• Nearby clinics

• Medicine stores

• Healthcare facilities

No typing or map navigation is required.

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👀 12. Big Visual Health Cards

Every voice response can also appear as a large, high-contrast visual card.

This means the patient can:

Hear it + See it

The UI is designed around accessibility rather than information density.

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👴 BUILT FOR SENIORS

Sahara is intentionally designed for elderly users.

Accessibility-first design

• Hindi / English language switch

• Three-step onboarding

• Extra-large touch buttons

• High-contrast interface

• Clear Devanagari text

• Large visual cards

• Simple interactions

• "I'm OK" button when speaking is difficult

The interface tries to remove the need to understand how an app works.

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⚙️ HOW AGORA POWERS SAHARA

Agora Conversational AI powers the complete voice conversation.

The pipeline includes:

Speech → AI → Voice

with:

• Deepgram for speech-to-text

• AI reasoning

• Murf for Hindi text-to-speech

Agora's real-time audio provides low-delay voice communication, while live captions flow through Agora's data channel.

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🧠 OUR AI ARCHITECTURE

Our own Python FastAPI server plugs into Agora as the AI brain.

Whenever the patient speaks:

1. Patient speaks

↓

2. Server receives the request

↓

3. Safety checks run first

↓

4. Appropriate tool is selected

↓

5. Health / emergency action is executed

↓

6. Visual card is generated

↓

7. AI generates the conversational response

↓

8. Response is spoken back to the patient

This architecture keeps safety-critical actions outside unrestricted AI generation.

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📱 PLATFORM SUPPORT

Sahara works across:

• Android

• iOS

• Web

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🧰 TECH STACK

Layer	Technology
Mobile App	React Native + TypeScript
Backend	Python + FastAPI
Voice / RTC	Agora
Speech-to-Text	Deepgram
Text-to-Speech	Murf AI
AI Models	Groq + OpenAI + Claude
Emergency Communication	WhatsApp Business API
Maps / Places	OpenStreetMap
Deployment	Render

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🔥 THE HARD PARTS WE SOLVED

Building Sahara in just 3 days meant solving several difficult problems simultaneously.

1. Emergency reliability + conversational AI

The AI needed to feel friendly and natural while emergency actions had to remain predictable and controlled.

2. Hindi & Hinglish understanding

Real users don't always speak textbook Hindi or English.

Sahara needed to understand natural Hindi + English mixing.

3. Voice + UI synchronization

The spoken response, live captions, health data, and visual cards all needed to stay synchronized.

4. Live failure recovery

The system needed fallback AI providers and alternate voice flows so the demo could continue even when individual services failed.

5. Duplicate emergency prevention

The same emergency must never result in multiple duplicate alert chains.

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⚠️ HONEST LIMITATIONS

Sahara is a prototype built during a hackathon, and we want to be transparent about what is and isn't connected today.

🚑 Emergency services

Ambulance and hospital alerts are designed into the system, but they are not yet connected to real 108/112 or hospital systems.

Today:

• Real alerts go to family members through WhatsApp.

• The patient has a one-tap 108 call button.

💾 Data storage

Data currently lives in memory.

A production system would require:

• Secure database

• User authentication

• Proper patient identity management

• Long-term health record storage

📷 Prescription reading

Prescription photo reading is currently being connected to a vision AI.

Manual entry works today.

🩺 Medical disclaimer

Sahara is a support tool, not a doctor.

It is designed to assist patients and caregivers, not replace qualified medical professionals.

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🚀 WHAT'S NEXT

🏥 1. Clinic & Hospital Admin Dashboard

The next step is taking Sahara beyond the patient app.

Healthcare staff could manage follow-ups through a central dashboard.

For example:

Patient discharged
↓
Sahara automatically calls them
↓
"How are you feeling today?"
↓
Patient responds naturally
↓
Sahara saves a structured summary
↓
Only high-risk patients are escalated to a human

The same system could automatically follow up after:

• Hospital discharge

• Missed medication

• Risky vitals

• Missed appointments

This can save staff time while making patients feel continuously cared for.

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🚑 2. Real Emergency Integration

Future versions can integrate with:

• 108 / 112

• Hospitals

• Ambulance systems

• Hospital pre-alert workflows

So responders can receive the patient's context before they arrive.

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🦾 3. Fall Detection

Integrate device and phone sensors to automatically detect potential falls and start the emergency workflow.

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📡 4. Connected Medical Devices

Sahara can connect directly with:

• Blood pressure monitors

• Pulse oximeters

• Glucose meters

• Other home health devices

This removes the need for manual readings.

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🗣️ 5. More Indian Languages

Expand beyond Hindi and English into:

• Tamil

• Bengali

• Marathi

• Telugu

• And more Indian languages

All within the same patient-first system.

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🪪 6. ABHA & Healthcare Ecosystem Integration

Future integrations include:

• ABHA health records

• Family mode

• ASHA worker mode

• Privacy and consent management

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🌱 THE BIGGER VISION

Sahara isn't trying to build another healthcare app.

It is trying to build a voice-first healthcare layer around the patient.

On normal days:

"Did I take my medicine?"

On difficult days:

"What's my BP?"

And when something goes seriously wrong:

"I can't do this myself."

That's when Sahara stops being just an assistant—

and becomes a lifeline.

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Built for the Agora Voice AI Hackathon 2026

 

Built in 3 days.
Designed around one simple idea:

Healthcare should listen.