Manav Rachna has always believed in inspiring its students to think out-of-the-box and incubate new projects and ventures that have time again won prizes on national and international platforms. In what has been a matter of immense pride, Team Spiro Studios of Manav Rachna bagged Infosys’ prestigious First Infy Maker Awards, India, in the health category and won a cash prize of Rs 5 lakhs along with trophy and certificates. The Team comprising Veerpal Sharma, now an MRIU alumnus and 2016 post graduate passout of Nutrition and Dietetics, MRIU, and Divyanshu Varshney, fourth year student of B.Tech IT, MRU, under the mentoring support and guidance of Roopam Sharma (winner of the MIT Tech Review’s ‘Innovators Under 35’ Award India Edition among others laurels) are among the Top 6 winners in the Health category from more than 2,500 registrations at the Infy Maker Awards, India.

Incidentally, The Infy Maker Awards are a part of Infosys’ commitment to encourage the concept of ‘Making’ in India, acknowledging those individuals that have an interesting or innovative solution for real-world issues or a knack for leveraging technology to make things easier. These Awards were initially launched in the U.S. by the Infosys Foundation USA in June 2015 in support of President Obama’s Nation of Makers initiative. The Infy Maker Awards now being held in India have recognized some of the best minds to laud their power of creativity and imagination.

As many as 20 winners were chosen across different categories: Health, Energy, Education, Sound & Music, Social Change Solutions, Robotics, Art & Design, Artificial Intelligence, Electronics among others. Team Spiro Studios– which had earlier secured 2nd position at the TechExpo 2016 in IIT Guwahati and was one of the top 8 Indian National Finalists at the Microsoft Imagine Cup 2016–created their project FIZIO to ensure that physiotherapy is on the right track.

This easy-to-use virtual rehabilitation platform has been designed to aid the rehabilitation process, and track patients’ progress. It aims to make physiotherapy fun and convenient by transforming existing physical therapy exercises into video-games, and uses Microsoft’s Kinect sensor to track and assess patient compliance. Designed with physical and occupational therapists, each exercise and activity is programmed to maximize recovery in a safe environment. The cognitive and motor activity required in the 3D-full body motion sensing games will make the entire process engaging and hence keep patients fit, active and feeling lively. This will lead to a reduction of rehab session costs, flexibility of time, reduce added injuries during transportation and allow for live chat access to medical assistance anytime. In addition, Fizio can also be used as a networking tool to share experiences. The physicians and therapists can follow-up the patient’s improvement online via FIZIO.

The product began had initially begun as a research project in the month of November 2015 after one of the Co-Founders of Team Spiro Studios, Divyanshu, met with an accident and faced the problem of inaccessibility during the rehabilitation process. The product evolved as a result of the Team’s empathy with the scenario of missing facilities.

Congratulating the winners, Dr Amit Bhalla, Vice President, MREI, said, “Team Spiros’ innovative project will succeed in bringing the rehabilitation process out of the confines of hospitals and fuel the spirit of innovation among other students as well! I congratulate them on their creative excellence and path breaking project which is bound to make a big difference to the whole process of health and healing among people seeking physiotherapy.”