Designing for health, designing for impact: How EzeRx is reimagining health care solutions for India and beyond

Partha Pratim Das Mahapatra, Founder and CEO of EzeRx, was still in college, getting a degree in electronic engineering, when his mother, only 37 at the time, developed serious heart problems. Surgery was required. After she recovered, Mahapatra asked her doctors what had led to such a severe condition so young. “They told me she’d been anemic for a long time,” he says.

Mahapatra graduated and went on to have a successful career in software engineering and IoT systems development at firms like Capgemini, Grant Thornton, and ITC InfoTech. He got used to solving difficult, open-ended problems—turning ambiguity into architecture, and architecture into working solutions. But he never forgot about the problems his mother had faced.

“My mother’s health issues made me want to create an impact,” he says. “In my career, you start with a difficult problem statement, and you transform it into a solution. So I thought: let’s work on this problem statement.”

That decision eventually led him to found EzeRx—an Indian health-tech company using optical sensing, AI, and intelligent product design to change how millions of people access health care services. Their product, EzeCheck, is reshaping public health programs while also reducing medical waste and carbon emissions at a scale few young companies achieve.

This is a story about engineering for better human outcomes—and about designing for sustainability from the very beginning.

Around the world, anemia is staggeringly common—affecting roughly one in four people globally, according to the latest estimates. Rates are especially high in South Asia and across large regions of Africa. Women of reproductive age, pregnant women, and young children are disproportionately affected.

At its core, anemia is a simple but consequential issue: the body doesn’t have enough healthy red blood cells to carry oxygen efficiently. Many people experience fatigue, weakness, shortness of breath, or difficulty concentrating. Others feel nothing at all until the condition becomes severe.

The impact extends well beyond discomfort. Chronic anemia is linked to increased risk of complications in pregnancy, poorer cognitive development in children, and heightened cardiovascular strain in adults. In India, where regional prevalence varies dramatically—from single-digit rates in some states to more than 60% in others among adolescent girls—the consequences ripple through families, workforces, and communities.

Most forms of anemia can be identified easily and treated affordably. The real barrier is detection. Testing traditionally requires a finger-prick or blood draw—something many people avoid, especially children, people with health-related stigma concerns, and residents of rural areas with limited clinical access.

“If you’re not feeling symptoms yet, why would you want to get pricked by a needle?” Mahapatra says. “For millions, that small barrier is enough to prevent diagnosis—and that delays care.”

Mahapatra began with a simple but ambitious question: What if checking hemoglobin didn’t require even a single drop of blood?

He didn't have a background in pathology. His wife and co-founder, Chaitali Roy—an electrical engineer—had some training with basic life support. They started in the garage of their rented house in Kolkata with whatever equipment they could gather. What they lacked in medical credentials, they made up for in engineering discipline, iterative testing, and determination.

For three and a half years, they experimented—testing different approaches and different ways to transmit, capture, and interpret light. They tried illuminating the eye, then the nail bed. Eventually, they honed in on the fingertip.

The end result was EzeCheck: a compact, handheld device that analyzes hemoglobin levels when a user places a finger over the device. No needles. No consumables. Results appear in under a minute.

EzeCheck uses a combination of spectrophotometry—white light is bounced off the fingertip—and optical signal analysis, with AI and machine learning algorithms translating the data into a hemoglobin estimate.

The AI gets smarter the more it works, so the more data the system gathers, the better the predictions become. Over several years, accuracy climbed from an initial 60% to more than 93%, with independent clinical validation reporting high sensitivity and specificity compared with laboratory CBC tests.

This combination of non-invasive convenience and laboratory-grade accuracy is what makes EzeCheck so important—and increasingly recommended for hospital screening programs and public health campaigns.

For the patients undergoing the test, what matters most is that it's fast, easy, and doesn’t hurt.

For the health workers who administer the test, what matters is the speed and reliability, the fact that it can be given almost anywhere, and that there are zero consumables. Additionally, the reports are traceable as they are stored digitally in the mobile app.

For the public health administrators and program managers, what matters is that more tests can be given, and data can be gathered at scale, with access to interactive dashboards via web portal.

EzeCheck’s industrial design reflects those needs. The form factor is compact and friendly. The user interface prioritizes clarity and ease of use in low-resource settings. Bluetooth connectivity and cloud dashboards support large-scale screening campaigns. And because the device requires no needles, gloves, or cartridges, it eliminates a huge amount of waste and logistical complexity from the process.

As Mahapatra notes: “Our goal was to create a device that feels approachable—and affordable—for the patient and efficient for the operator. Those two things have to coexist.”

In its first seven years, the company has deployed more than 8,500 devices across the globe and partnered with more than 400 organizations to screen over 6.5 million people.

Their reach extends across 21 Indian states and into several other countries, including Indonesia, Vietnam, Myanmar, the Philippines, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, and Burkina Faso—regions where non-invasive, infrastructure-light diagnostics fill a critical gap. Within India, EzeCheck provides a scalable solution designed specifically for flagship government programmes, enabling efficient screening for initiatives like Anemia Mukt Bharat, the Rashtriya Bal Swasthya Karyakram (RBSK) for school children, Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, and POSHAN Abhiyan.

Regulatory approvals have followed, including clearance in India and an ongoing FDA 510(k) submission in the United States. More than 17 international patents have been filed and four patents granted, with seven research articles published in peer-reviewed journals.

But one of the most striking metrics isn’t clinical—it’s environmental.

Traditional blood testing generates significant medical waste: needles, syringes, gloves, cotton, plastics, and packaging. By eliminating the need for disposables, EzeCheck has already helped reduce more than 15 tons (33,000 pounds) of biomedical waste and save 46+ kilotons (more than 1 million pounds) of carbon emissions, through avoided consumables, reduced laboratory energy use, and fewer patient trips for diagnostics. It has also saved 6,000+ liters (1,585+ gallons) of blood that would have been collected for testing.

The financial savings for public health programs and NGOs are equally significant, freeing resources that can be reinvested in care delivery and infrastructure.

For Mahapatra, sustainability is not an optional benefit—it’s integral to the design philosophy. “By eliminating waste and complexity from medical devices, we don’t just optimize performance —we protect patients, communities, and the planet.”

If EzeCheck tackles a single, high-impact indicator—hemoglobin levels in the blood—Mahapatra’s second product, EzeFind, expands the horizon dramatically.

EzeFind is a compact, IoT-enabled urine analyzer designed to run more than ten common diagnostic parameters in about a minute. Using image processing and computer vision, it evaluates markers related to kidney health, liver function, metabolic disorders, and infections—all without a full laboratory setup.

In many underserved regions, these are tests that simply don’t happen early enough, because they require centralized labs or larger equipment. EzeFind brings that capability to clinics, mobile health camps, and remote screening programs.

EzeRx has also developed a large language model (LLM) that helps generate reports, explain results in plain language, and highlight possible conditions or follow-up needs. The goal isn’t to replace clinicians—it’s to support them, especially in settings where time and resources are limited.

Small enough to sit on a tabletop, fast enough for high-volume screening, and accurate enough for clinical use, EzeFind is currently in clinical trial.

As adoption of EzeCheck expanded, Mahapatra’s team began redesigning the device for larger-scale manufacturing and improved durability. For that effort, they adopted Autodesk Fusion as their end-to-end design environment. “Fusion is a game changer for product design,” Mahapatra says.

Working with hardware engineer Diptadip Barai, the team modeled their entire enclosure—from finger bed to sensor mount to hinge mechanism—directly in Fusion in 3D. No legacy 2D CAD. No separate modeling tools.

From the same models, they also generated the drawings required for documentation, measurement, and manufacturing. This enabled faster iteration, ergonomic testing, automatic drawing updates as designs evolved, and streamlined version control across the team

Before committing to molds—a major cost and environmental investment—the team stress-tested every plastic component through simulation in Fusion. They modeled wall thicknesses, rib structures, load points, and evaluated product performance, durability, and deformation in drop scenarios and thermal variations to ensure the device would withstand real-world use.

This reduced the need for multiple rounds of physical prototypes, saving materials, time, and money. It also helped the team optimize the enclosure for lighter weight and minimal material usage, reinforcing their sustainability goals.

Field feedback drove many refinements. Finger-bed geometry was adjusted to block ambient light and improve accuracy. The outer shell was redesigned for comfort and portability. An upper finger cap was added for consistent positioning. Display visibility and insertion ergonomics were improved through repeated testing.

Each iteration flowed through Fusion—modeled, validated, documented, and prepared for manufacturing efficiently. For a company building devices intended for rural clinics, school health programs, and mobile medical units, that continuous, responsive design loop is essential.

Today, EzeRx is growing quickly, backed by investment from a leading pharmaceutical company and supported by a network of medical institutions and public health partners. Expansion efforts are underway across Southeast Asia, Africa, and the United States.

In each new region, the core challenge remains the same: how to bring diagnostics and health care services closer to the people who need them—early, affordably, and with minimal environmental impact?

These technologies aren’t just prototypes or pilot ideas. They are already deployed across schools, public health centers, community clinics, and blood-donation camps. They are helping clinicians catch anemia earlier, monitor chronic conditions, and make informed decisions faster. They are conserving resources and reducing waste at a time when the environmental cost of healthcare is rising globally.

Most importantly, they are reminding the design and engineering community that innovation doesn’t have to choose between health impact and sustainability impact. Thoughtful, user-centered hardware can deliver both.

“We have to decide what kind of society we are going to build,” Mahapatra says. For EzeRx, that society is one where health care services are accessible, affordable, and environmentally responsible—where technology bridges the gap between care and community, and where better design leads to better lives.

"We know all too well how a delayed diagnosis, like my mother’s undetected anemia, can cast a long shadow on recovery,” Mahapatra says. “Even after her heart surgery, we still live with dietary restrictions, constant vigilance, and the lingering consequences of a preventable delay. That is why we are building solutions that not only diagnose early and accurately but also respect people’s long-term health—and our planet’s well-being.”