Indian gets world’s first digital vaccine patent

Rupali Mukherjee / TNN / Jun 8, 2022, 10:22 IST SHARE AA

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Indian biomedical tech entrepreneur Bhargav Sri Prakash has been
awarded the first patent globally by the US patent office for a `digital
vaccine’, a platform that prevents real world health issues through the
metaverse.

Digital vaccines use applications via smart-phones, tablets, and other

similar devices for nudging positive human behaviour through
neurocognitive training. Sri Prakash, founder of the life sciences
startup FriendsLearn, recently received the patent for the 'systems
and methods for digital vaccine' that he developed as part of Carnegie
Mellon University's digital vaccine project.

The work involves the use of artificial intelligence and a gamified

metaverse platform.

“It is a milestone for the scientific field of digital vaccines. It also

represents an uncommon milestone for an Indian deep tech startup’s
biomedical innovation on the world stage. The platform has broad
applications – it can potentially prevent a wide spectrum of diseases
ranging from Covid-19 and influenza to diabetes, cardiovascular
disease, hypertension and certain cancers, and even cognitive
diseases,” Sri Prakash, who spends time between Chennai and Palo
Alto, says.
Sri Prakash’s mobile game fooya!, developed using the patented
technology, has been used to conduct clinical trials on children
between 3 and 18 years. In the game, the child is a superhero
fighting junk food that an evil scientist is developing. Children who
played fooya! for just 20 minutes a week made significantly healthier
food choices immediately, and successive weekly sessions reproduced
positive health outcomes.

The opportunity to safely and effectively prevent disease

by non-invasively stimulating the body's immune
system and biomarkers through software presents a vast
potential.
Bhargav Sri Prakash, Founder, FriendsLearn

Digital vaccines are currently being deployed in

selected school partners of Carnegie Mellon’s project across the world.
Bhargav applied for the patent in the US about five years ago. His
patent applications are pending in India, Europe, China, Australia,
Canada and New Zealand.

Rahul Ladhania, data science researcher and faculty member at the

University of Michigan School of Public Health, notes that game-based
learning isn't exactly novel, with analog and digital games having
been studied across multiple settings (classrooms, clinics, etc) to
promote physical activity, nutritional knowledge, and healthy diet.
“But what sets the digital vaccine apart is its implicit learning and
neurocognitive training mechanism components, which can induce
biomarker-level changes in individuals, thus helping trigger lifestyle
habit formation, and reduce risk and incidence of diseases,” he says.

Researchers from his School – home to the world’s first polio vaccine
– are evaluating health outcomes from this novel vaccine platform.

Ladhania says that while most of the interventions with the

technology have so far focused on children, “this can easily be
adapted and extended to applications for preventing or treating a
wide range of pathologies – like post-traumatic stress disorder,
mental health, sexual health – and for diverse target populations.”