Sehat Sathi · Tejas Patel

The brief

I was born and raised in Gujarat, so for Design Studio 2 at UNSW I gave myself a brief close to home: a heart monitor for the villages of Kutch. A hospital is a long way off: on the map in my report, the drive from Tera to Leva Patel Hospital Road in Bhuj is 81 km and 1 h 47 minreported · sourceGoogle Maps route from Tera to Leva Patel Hospital Road (81 km), on p.6 of my UNSW report, Aug 2024. The same page's label says the nearest hospital is 70 minutes away; I use the map's number.. It had to be something people would wear every day, and a medical device on the body invites questions, so I made it look like it belonged to the region once the size and the interactions were settled.

The grey pebble-shaped shell worn at the neckline of a maroon top embroidered with silver sequin flowers, photographed outdoors. Pink light shows through its petal cut-outs and a small push button sits at its left end. — v4 at the neckline of an embroidered top, from the shoot in my August 2024 report. The petals are cut right through the printed shell, so the light inside shows the motif itself.

Four directions

Over the studio I made seven named versions, in four directions: a printed case, an e-ink face, light and touch, then the motif shell. Here are the main ones. The decisions below are where each one turned.

From a grey case around the board and sensor to the petal shell. The screen behind v1 shows Edge Impulse, where I was training a neural network for prediction. The v3.1 and v4 photographs are dated 6 August 2024.

What I mapped first

I looked at two portable ECGs, D-Heart and VivaLNK. My report lists possible weaknesses for each, with no prices or measurements behind them: D-Heart’s 12-lead setup may need training, VivaLNK’s battery may drain quickly, and both may cost too much for low-income villages. So the brief became a monitor someone could wear every day with no training.

decision 1

It had to look like it came from Kutch

A hand-drawn mind map on a sheet of paper: bubbles for indirect factors, direct factors, community health, cultural appropriation, contextual inquiry and activities, linked by yellow and green lines. At the top right, traditional aesthetics is drawn next to wearables.

After a digital mind map and some paper notes, I drew this map by hand. It puts direct factors like diet, physical activity and medical access next to indirect ones like transport, social norms and socio-economic status, and next to the life of the region, from festivals to physical labour. At the top right, traditional aesthetics sits beside wearables. My premise was that a device that looks medical might put people off wearing it, so the form had to come from the place.

Making it smaller

First the connectors came out, then the screen.

decision 2

The e-ink screen showed a face

Prototype v2 on a black bench: a navy printed box with an e-ink screen showing a calm smiling face, wired with green, red and blue leads to three ECG electrode pads. A glue gun, a reel of solder, snips and a keyboard sit behind it.

v1 was a printed case around the board and sensor. For v2 I tried an e-ink screen, because it doesn’t give off light, and I took inspiration from emotionally durable design and gave it animated faces instead of data. Here it’s on the bench, wired to three electrodes. After my first assessment I shrank it into v2.2 by taking out connectors and tidying the wiring, and that version ran real-time activity tracking, trained on a small sample of data.

decision 3

The screen came out because it wouldn't shrink

A XIAO ESP32-S3 board hand-soldered onto a blue 6-axis motion sensor board and a red heart-rate monitor board, its thin cable running to a flat antenna, on a black bench.

By v2.2 I couldn’t make it any smaller with the screen inside, so I changed direction. I moved to a newer processor, a XIAO ESP32-S3, soldered by hand onto a 6-axis IMU and an ECG sensor board; this is the test circuit on 17 July 2024. I got working code for it with help from AI. The screen’s job went to an RGB light, a button and a haptic motor, which is why Sehat Sathi talks in light: the screen was the part I couldn’t shrink.

21 × 17.8mmreported · sourceSeeed Studio, XIAO ESP32S3 getting-started wiki, specifications table: 'Dimensions 21 x 17.8mm' (read 22 Oct 2026).the XIAO ESP32-S3 board

On the body

Then it had to live on a garment: how it holds on, how it lights up, and where it sits.

decision 4

The magnets that hold it on are meant to be the ECG contacts

CAD render: the device's rounded grey base plate with three black magnets set into it in a row. — CAD drawing

By v3.1 I wanted the device to come off the garment for washing and charging, so I tested how it would attach: a puck on a base, wired to three electrodes. In v4 the base plate holds three magnets, one in each pocket, and they are meant to do two jobs: hold the device to the top, and serve as the contact points for the ECG electrodes. The idea is that you lift it off, the top goes in the wash, the device goes on charge, and it can be shared. Sharing came from the inner loop of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s butterfly diagram, which is share.

3magnetsmeasured · sourceCounted: three round pockets in the base plate of the exploded drawing of the final design, UNSW report p.19 (Aug 2024), and one magnet in each pocket in the printed v4. A 2025 CAD render of the plate (file of 18 Aug 2025) shows the same three.in the base plate

decision 5

The light comes through an embroidery motif

A white 3D-printed lattice tile held between finger and thumb in front of a lamp, light passing through its petal-shaped cut-outs, with print lines visible on the surface.

I took the patterns from the region’s embroidery, redrew a petal motif in CAD and cut it through the shell, so the LEDs light the motif itself. Before the final shell I printed test tiles and held several of them up to a light; this white one is a lattice of petals. I also upgraded the LEDs so they could animate, for signals a wearer could learn: time to see a doctor, or a reward for meeting a goal.

My report shows two places it could sit, the neckline and the hem. Before my final submission I photographed my friend Maitri wearing it in both, and took one more of it on a dress form.

A dress form in a studio with tall windows, wearing a maroon top embroidered with sequinned flowers and a long red printed skirt, with the lit device at the neckline on a black cord. — On a dress form, lit, with its cable running down behind.

The device clipped at the hem of a maroon sequinned top, its petal cut-outs glowing, a USB-C cable hanging down, green foliage blurred behind. Torso only. — At the hem of the top, the other place it could sit. It runs on its own battery now.

A year later

In 2025, a year after the studio, I came back to Sehat Sathi and designed a companion app for community health workers, built around a patient list and a step-by-step ECG recording. Its code was written mostly with AI, in Cursor, to my design. It has no link to the device: its connection and its recording are simulated in its own code. Its dashboard shows accuracy percentages with nothing behind them, so I’ve left those screens out.

The 2025 app's patient list on a dark screen, filled with demo patients: five invented names with their ages, towns in Kutch and heart rates, three tagged Anomaly and Urgent in red and two tagged Normal in green. — 2025, demo dataRecording an ECG, then the alerts3 screens, phone

The 2025 app after a recording: three ticked reminders (keep still, check the electrode contact, thirty seconds), a green tick, Recording Complete, and buttons to record another or view the patient. — 2025, demo dataRecording an ECG, then the alerts3 screens, phone