KOCHI: When it comes to saving the life of a snake bite victim, everything hinges on identifying the species. Kerala has seen around 55 snakebite deaths and as many as 24,186 incidents between 2015 to 2019. Hence, it becomes important to identify the snake correctly. However, not many can do it. This is what prompted Indriyam Biologics Pvt Ltd, a biomedical startup that works in diagnostics and therapeutics of snake envenomation, to come up with SnakeHub, a mobile application.
“It is a social initiative,” said R Dileep Kumar, co-founder of Indriyam Biologics. According to him, they are a Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR), Govt of India certified bio-medical startup firm. “We have brought out the app as a part of the CSR initiative and the platform is free,” he said. “The team of five, comprising Arjun C P, Anaswara Krishnan, Amol Lopes, Vivek Sharma and I, has identified 114 species of snakes endemic to Kerala,” he said. According to him, the application provides information regarding each of them. “The data, at present, is available in both English and Malayalam,” said Dileep.
Dileep and Vivek Sharma had earlier brought out a book on snakes of Kerala. “The amazing fact is that Kerala has around 35 per cent of the entire snake species,” he added. According to him, identifying the species and the hospital where anti-venom treatment is available goes a long way in saving a snakebite victim. “The app has information like introductory biology, the ecology of snakes, snakebite first aid, identification tips, snake conservation, hospitals which treat snakebite and snake rescuer’s list,” said Dileep.
And, for those who want to go deep into the subject, there is a checklist on snakes of Kerala, he added.
According to him, other than the endemics of the Southern Western Ghats, nearly all the other species are found all over India. “Hence, very soon we will be expanding the reach of the app, first in South India and then to the rest of the country,” he said.
At present, the Malayalam names of most of the common species are available in the app. “We will be regularly updating the remaining ones. We are grateful to our numerous supporters who have generously furnished photographs of various species, invested their valuable time in discussions and offered unpublished or published data to enrich our content. As SnakeHub is in its infancy, there are numerous things that need to be fixed and managed,” said Dileep.