About Aakhyān™

The Problem

A man sits in an auto-rickshaw leaving a cancer hospital. In his pocket is a folded discharge paper. It says things like "Tab. Capecitabine 500mg 3-0-3 post meals x 14 days, HFS Gr ≥2 → D/C & report." He can read every word. He understands none of it.

He is not illiterate. He finished school. He reads his mother tongue every day. But the language of medicine is not his language — it is English medical jargon, written for the file, not for the patient. Tonight, when his wife asks "which pill does he take first?" — he will guess.

And the confusion does not end at the medicine cabinet. Two weeks later, when his palms turn red and he doesn't know if it's serious. When the follow-up date arrives and he can't remember which department, which floor, which test was ordered. When he has a question but no idea how to reach the right person, or what to ask in words a doctor would act on. The discharge paper was the beginning of the silence — not the end of it.

This is not an Indian problem alone. Wherever medicine speaks one language and patients speak another — in the clinics of rural Bihar and in the hospitals of Birmingham — the gap is the same. India feels it at a different scale: 22 official languages, over 780 living tongues, 1.4 billion people, and a medical system that documents almost exclusively in English. But the fundamental failure — critical health information locked in jargon that the patient was never meant to read — is universal.

The consequences are not abstract. They are missed doses. Incorrect timing. Dangerous food-drug interactions. A side effect that should have sent someone back to the hospital, but didn't — because no one explained what to watch for, in words the family could understand. They are avoidable readmissions, preventable complications, and the quiet erosion of trust between patients and the system that is supposed to care for them.

Aakhyān begins where this gap cuts deepest — oncology discharge in the Barak Valley of Assam, where patients travel hours across state lines for chemotherapy and return home with a paper they cannot act on. But the silence extends far beyond one document, one specialty, and one region. And it is waiting to be broken.

What Aakhyān Does

Aakhyān (আখ্যান — "narrative" in Assamese and Bengali) is an independently developed, AI-powered patient communication platform. It converts oncology discharge summaries into clear, voice-first explanations in the patient's own language — and then follows the patient through the post-discharge recovery window with medication adherence nudges, on-demand information access, follow-up reminders, and pre-visit availability checks.

The discharge communication pipeline:

  1. Capture — the discharge summary is photographed at the point of discharge
  2. Extract — AI reads and structures the medical data
  3. Render — deterministic, clinician-reviewed templates convert structured data into natural-language instructions (no AI-generated text reaches the patient)
  4. Review — the treating clinician approves the rendered output
  5. Deliver — advanced text-to-speech technology generates a voice message in the patient's language
  6. Receive — the patient gets a voice message they can replay at home

No hallucination. No jargon. No guesswork.

For the full post-discharge communication architecture — medication nudges, on-demand information access, follow-up reminders, and pre-visit availability checks — see The Platform.

Research Preview

Aakhyān is currently in pilot preparation. The Institutional Ethics Committee (IEC) application has been submitted for a proposed randomised controlled trial evaluating the impact of vernacular voice-message discharge instructions on medication adherence and patient comprehension in oncology outpatients. Full study design, outcomes, and status are on The Research page.

Aakhyān is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by any hospital or institutional body. Any future research collaboration is subject to formal ethics clearance and institutional approval.

Creator

Dr. Debaraj Shome Purkayastha (MBBS, MS) — Concept, Design & Development.

All intellectual property associated with Aakhyān — including, but not limited to, its technology, methodology, source code, templates, content, and design — is owned by Dr. Debaraj Shome Purkayastha. See Terms of Use for details.

Proposed Research Site

Silchar Cancer Centre — A unit of the Assam Cancer Care Foundation (ACCF), located at Ghungoor, Silchar. A 130-bedded centre equipped with advanced technology including radiation therapy (LiNAC), surgical oncology, chemotherapy, PET scan, MRI, CT scan, mammography, critical care, and palliative care. Strategically located to serve cancer patients in Silchar, its neighbouring districts, and adjacent states.

Assam Cancer Care Foundation (ACCF) — A joint initiative between the Government of Assam and Tata Trusts, established in December 2017 to create a first-of-its-kind, three-level cancer grid in Assam. The distributed care model delivers standardised and affordable cancer care closer to patients' homes across the state.

IEC approval is being sought from the above institution to conduct the proposed research study.

Listing here does not imply endorsement, affiliation, or partnership.