Chennai Girl In Forbes '30 Under 30' List For Device To Beat Addiction

29-year-old Akshaya Shanmugam, CEO of Lumme Inc from Chennai, has made it to the list of innovators and entrepreneurs in the Forbes' '30 under 30' list in the healthcare sector. Her venture cracks the code to beat addictive behaviour by combining wearable technology, machine learning, and behavioural psychology.

"Our platform automatically detects addictive behaviour, predicts indulgence in addictive behaviour, and prevents it by delivering clinically validated interventions. It also helps individuals gain better insights into their daily life and helps them understand the why, how, and what surrounding their lifestyle choices," said Shanmugam.

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Educational Background

Shanmugam completed her schooling at Chettinad Vidyashram. She went on to pursue engineering at Meenakshi Sundararajan Engineering College. In 2009, she moved to the US for higher studies. While Shanmugam was pursuing PhD in an area that involves developing health monitoring systems outside hospitals, she met Abhinav Parate who was working on a thesis with wearables. Backed by Parate and a few professors, Shanmugam set up Lumme to solve the global addiction problem.

"It is quite an honour to be part of this list. It is a validation that there is potential in the technology that we have developed. This only drives us further to make meaningful contributions to the field of healthcare," Shanmugam told TOI

The technology is in the process of being clinically validated. Shanmugam hopes to launch the product in the market by the summer of 2018.

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How does it work?

Explaining how the platform would work for a person who smokes, Shanmugam says for the first two weeks, users wear the smartwatches and go about their routine.

The platform passively monitors smoking behaviour and looks at other factors like the time of the day, their movements and social interactions. It then makes an assessment of the smoking patterns of the users and predicts when they are likely to smoke next. Based on the prediction, the platform is able to send an alert 6 minutes before they are about to light a cigarette

"We have had two national scale clinical trials and are in the midst of the third. With the first two, we were able to make predictions with 95% accuracy," she said.

This work is the outcome of research conducted at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Yale School of Medicine. Lumme is funded by the National Institute of Health and has raised $1.7 million in funding.

Women like Shanmugam are an inspiration for all young students looking forward to prove their mettle in the field of science.

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