Markham physician aims to empower patients through health literacy app

By David Yin, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

Markham-based physician Tami Vasanthakumaran is developing the app Meducine to empower patients around the world through health literacy.

The app allows people to choose one of five health literacy levels and provides various lesson chapters related to body parts, lifestyles, and other aspects of health. Each chapter comes with features such as diagrams, explanations, and quizzes to provide different types of engagement. The app grants achievements whenever a user completes a chapter or level.

Vasanthakumaran said that she plans to provide the app in 150 languages. However, she added that she will focus on the Greater Toronto Area – specifically, the Tamil and Indigenous community – for a pilot launch, ideally in January 2026.

“Since it is multilingual, we also want to test the language translation aspect,” she said. “So, working with the Tamil community of Toronto is kind of the first mini-pilot. And then we hope to expand onwards.”

Health literacy refers to how well people can understand their own health information.

According to the Canadian Public Health Association, 60 per cent of Canadian adults and 88 per cent of Canadian seniors have limited health literacy.

Vasanthakumaran explained that health illiteracy not only impairs one’s health, but also one’s finances, as well as a society’s health equality, economy, social support services, productivity, and trust towards the healthcare industry.

She added that even with the internet and Google, people can still have trouble understanding health information due to information overload, accessibility issues, or a lack of cultural consideration.

The issue of health literacy has also affected Vasanthakumaran on a personal level.

She said that during a night shift at an Indian hospital, an elderly man arrived with a large tumour, asking for the medical staff to help him.

“And when we told him that he was beyond cure, all he could say was, ‘I wish I had known to come sooner,’” she said. “And those words really stuck with me because it is so heartbreaking.”

She said that this incident ultimately inspired her to develop Meducine.

Although Meducine is still under development, Vasanthakumaran has already won several awards for her startup. She won first place at UNITE 2030, earned a Eureka Fellowship for Youth Changemakers in Canada, and was a Fowler Global Finalist.

She said that improving health literacy through Meducine can not only help patients, but also healthcare providers by making appointments more efficient and providing cultural contexts that providers may have overlooked.

“I think the ultimate hope is that people feel more empowered and informed about their own health and well-being,” she said. “I feel like that’s such a bold and big statement to make, but I think that having a platform like Meducine can truly help everyone.”

To learn more about Meducine, head to meducine.org.

Photo: Tami Vasanthakumaran is the founder of Meducine, an award-winning app that aims to provide users with health literacy-based education. (Meducine supplied photo)