All problem statements
SIH26231SoftwareMedTech / BioTech / HealthTech

Digital Companion for Field Drug Testing

Ministry of Home Affairs

Ideas submitted
82 / 500
Deadline
30 September 2026
Category
Software
Theme
MedTech / BioTech / HealthTech

Looks like it needs

IoT / Embedded

Background

Field drug-testing kits currently in use rely on visual interpretation of a colour-change reaction. This makes results subjective, difficult to standardise across officers, and leaves no verifiable record that a test was actually conducted at a given place and time. As a result, field test outcomes cannot presently be relied upon as documentary evidence.

Description

Participants are to build a mobile application that works alongside existing colorimetric field-test kits (no new hardware).

The application should

Capture an image of the test result using the device camera, using a reference colour card in-frame for lighting calibration.

Automatically classify the result against a defined set of outcome categories (e.g., positive, negative, inconclusive).

Generate a tamper-evident digital record of the test, capturing timestamp, GPS location, and an operator identifier, together with a cryptographic hash of the captured image.

Maintain a simple, searchable log of tests conducted.

Expected Deliverables

A working mobile/web application prototype demonstrating image capture, automated result classification, and generation of a signed digital record.

Note to Participants

The output of this application is a presumptive field-test result and a supporting digital record; it does not replace laboratory confirmatory testing.

How contested this one is

as of 28 Sept
82ideas submitted+28 in 2 days

That puts it 129th of the 240 statements that have any ideas at all, out of 240 on the board. It is moving, so the field here is already forming.

Added mid-season. This statement first appeared on 6 September, after the original list went out. Teams who shortlisted early have most likely never seen it.

See what the whole field is picking →

Counted from the official portal twice a day. The portal itself only shows today.

What a jury will ask about this

  1. 01“Who actually faces this problem today?”

    What works: Naming one real person and what they do instead right now. Reading the statement back is not an answer, they already read it.

  2. 02“This already exists. Why yours?”

    What works: That existing tools are consumer products. Yours is built for the ministry, works offline, in the local language, on official data.

  3. 03“Then why has nobody solved it yet?”

    What works: The real blocker. No connectivity, no incentive, nobody owns the data. You only know this if you read the ministry's own reports.

All 18 questions, with the trap answers →

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