Nabz Care: a telemedicine platform built for villages with one bar of signal

Nabz Care's founders came to us after a pilot that did not work. They had used an off-the-shelf video consultation app in twenty villages. Calls dropped constantly, health workers spent more time reconnecting than consulting, and doctors could not see or hear enough to prescribe with confidence. Within a month the health workers had gone back to asking patients to travel to the district town.

The founders' model was sound: trained community health workers in each village, qualified doctors consulting remotely, medicines from a local pharmacy. What failed was software designed for city broadband.

Our designer and engagement lead spent two weeks with health workers across both states. We measured the network in each village at different times of day, watched consultations on the old app, and sat with patients who had never spoken to a doctor on a phone before.

The network was rarely absent but almost always weak: enough for audio most of the time, enough for video some of the time, and enough for small data syncs nearly always. Health workers were capable and motivated, but most were more comfortable in Hindi or the local dialect than in English, and their phones were entry-level Android devices shared with their families.

The core idea of Nabz Care is that the consultation does not depend on the call. Before connecting, the health worker records symptoms (by voice, transcribed from Hindi), captures vitals from Bluetooth devices, and takes photos of any visible condition. That packet syncs to the doctor first — it is small and survives weak networks.

Only then does the call start. It begins as video if the network allows, drops automatically to audio if it does not, and falls back to an asynchronous consult — the doctor reviews the packet and responds with a prescription and advice — if even audio fails. The patient is never left without an outcome.

Native Android was essential for reliable Bluetooth and offline behaviour, so the mobile team was the largest part of the project.

Each decision was tested in the field before being locked in.

Everything that shipped, for health workers, doctors, pharmacies and the operations team.

We relaunched in the same twenty villages where the original pilot had failed — deliberately. Health workers who had given up on the old app were the toughest possible test. Within weeks they were completing consultations that previously would have meant a trip to town.

Expansion to a hundred villages followed in waves, each with a two-day training for new health workers run partly by experienced ones from the first wave.

Design for the median connection, not the best one. Separating the data packet from the live call made the product work on the network villages actually have.

The health worker is the product's real user. Every feature that saved them a step or a language barrier improved care more than any feature for doctors.