Waaban, meaning "morning light" in Ojibwe, embodies the dawn of accessible healthcare for all. Our mission is to address the unique challenges faced by remote and underserved communities, where healthcare access is often limited. With a compassionate, technology-driven approach, Waaban aims to be the guiding light that bridges healthcare gaps, offering vital health tools and community support.

Waaban empowers remote and underserved communities with personalized health insights and easy-to-access guidance. Through Twilio integration, users can connect with Waaban via phone calls or text messages, enabling them to input symptoms and receive health recommendations without needing internet access. Our AI processes these inputs to provide tailored health insights, guiding users in making informed health decisions.

With Deepgram’s speech-to-text and text-to-speech technology, Waaban offers seamless audio interactions, ensuring accessibility for everyone, including those with limited literacy. Waaban also provides community leaders with data-driven health insights on regional trends, helping them make informed decisions to address public health challenges collectively.

By bridging healthcare gaps in remote areas, Waaban serves as a reliable health companion, making personalized health support available to everyone, no matter where they are.

Waaban was developed using advanced AI and healthcare expertise to meet the specific needs of small communities:

• Twilio powers Waaban’s call and text features, allowing users in low-connectivity regions to engage with Waaban via phone and receive health insights directly.
• Deepgram’s text-to-speech technology provides clear, AI-generated voice responses, enhancing accessibility for those who prefer audio guidance.
• LLM models from Llama were fine-tuned for health guidance, enabling Waaban to analyze user inputs and generate accurate, context-aware responses.
• Groq accelerated processing powers Waaban’s backend, ensuring efficient handling of machine learning inference to deliver real-time health recommendations, creating a responsive experience.

These technologies combine to create a robust, accessible, and highly responsive platform that empowers both individuals and communities to achieve better health outcomes.

During development, we faced challenges with integrating Twilio’s API for smooth calling features. Some features weren’t as straightforward as expected, so we sought guidance from mentors to navigate these issues. Additionally, ensuring that our AI models performed well with Groq's processing required careful tuning.

We’re incredibly proud to have developed a functional application that aligns with our original vision for Waaban. Despite technical hurdles, we built a solution that provides real value to remote communities. Every successful interaction—whether through a call, a message, or audio guidance—reinforces the potential of Waaban to make a real impact in people’s lives.

Through this journey, we deepened our understanding of building accessible, AI-driven solutions for underserved communities. We learned valuable lessons about integrating technologies like Twilio and Groq to maximize accessibility and responsiveness, especially for low-connectivity regions.

We’re excited to expand Waaban’s capabilities and reach! Next, we plan to enhance support for message-based health consultations and introduce quick diagnostic features to provide users with immediate health guidance. These features will offer users in remote villages timely insights, helping them make informed decisions and access the limited healthcare resources available in their area.

We’re also looking to integrate proactive health reminders in future updates, which will help users stay on top of important health milestones, such as medication schedules and follow-up visits. Our vision is to make Waaban an essential health companion for remote communities, empowering them with every tool they need to improve their health and well-being.