Akshaya Shanmugam, the CEO of Lumme Inc., is among the innovators and entrepreneurs in the Forbes’ ‘30 under 3... Read More

CHENNAI: For the second year in a row, a Chennai native is among the innovators and entrepreneurs in the Forbes’ ‘30 under 30’ list in the area of healthcare. The 2018 edition includes Akshaya Shanmugam, 29, the CEO of Lumme Inc., which is cracking the code to beat addictive behaviour by combining wearable technology, machine learning, and behavioural psychology. In January this year, 27-year-old Vivek Kopparthi had made it to the 2017 list for his contributions in neonatal care technology.

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

“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.

The technology is in the process of being clinically validated and Shanmugam hopes to launch the product in the market by the summer of 2018. “The first phase of our launch is the smoking cessation platform. We will tie up with corporates so they can include this as part of their employee wellness programmes,” she said. ‘Predictions made with 95% accuracy in 2 trials’

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. Itthen 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 minutesbefore they are abouttolight 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 with95% accuracy,” shesaid.

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 Institutes of Health and has raised $1.7 million in funding.

“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,” said Shanmugam.

