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Developer Builds ASHA, a Voice AI Health Guide Designed for Low-Literacy Users in India

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A developer participating in the 10-day #VoiceForBharat AI challenge built ASHA, a real-time voice-based health assistant aimed at making basic health guidance more accessible in India. The project was built on the Murf LiveKit Starter, which provided a foundation using LiveKit, Deepgram speech recognition, a large language model, and Murf Falcon text-to-speech. ASHA is designed for users who may struggle with conventional digital interfaces, allowing them to describe symptoms conversationally in everyday language rather than navigating complex menus or typing queries. The assistant is conceived as a community health guide and is not intended to replace professional medical care. The developer's Day 10 retrospective covers the system's architecture, real-time audio pipeline challenges, safety considerations, and lessons learned during the build.

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