panaji viraj marathes dreams are unlike those of most 12yearolds the class vii student from sanquelim was initiated into programming and robotics at seven and has already built five apps all of which aspire to help persons with different ailments and disabilities and it is his agecare app for dementia patients and their caregivers which won him an interaction with pm narendra modi last weekthe agecare app secured a top spot at the smart india hackathon 2022 and made viraj the only junior category winner to have interacted with the pm via video conferencingmy parents being doctors had received a dementia patient at their hospital somewhere in march and were discussing the complexities of the case over the dinner table at home said viraj it got me interested and i began researching about dementia online around the same time i had to fill up the smart india hackathon entry and i thought of finding a solution revolving around dementia just as luck would have it one of the 500 problem statements participants could choose from had one on dementia raised by the union governments department of science and technology i wanted to offer something in my app which other apps for dementia did not he said i found that the feature for caregivers is what was missing and i decided to work around it my solution has a master app for the caregiver which allows him or her to alert the dementia patient to take medicines for instance said virajto the delight of the student of dr k b hedgewar vidymandir karapur tisk sanquelim his idea was immediately selected in april and he began working on the agecare app prototypeour agecare app also has a diary feature where the patient enters how he or she is feeling on that particular day and it helps the caregiver understand the patients mood i want to mainly focus on helping persons with disabilities and persons coping with different illnesses in the future too one app i was working on was to help visuallyimpaired persons to know what objects are present in front of them said viraj the app took viraj fifteen days to develop and the design for the app was by his teammate janhavee dattaguru joshifor viraj who also plays badminton the keyboard and likes to paint programming and robotics also began as a hobbyat first it began as a hobby for me when i was in class ii then it turned into a passion and now it is a way of life for me he said i try not to miss school in between my programming lessons and the different hackathons and appathons in which i participate i attend school even during competitions i have been doing it since class ii so it has become a routine for me by nowvirajs mother rajeshree is a radiologist and father vishwanath is a gynaecologist but the young boy wants to continue pursuing his journey in the tech worldhe is already wellversed in seven