DMD Sathi: A Personalised Digital Care Guidance System for DMD Patients & Parents

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a progressive X-linked neuromuscular disorder that requires continuous, multidisciplinary care involving neuromuscular specialists, rehabilitation, nutrition, respiratory and cardiac monitoring, medication management, and emergency planning. Families may face difficulty locating understandable and locally relevant information, particularly when information is available in only one language or when healthcare resources are distributed across different providers. This paper presents DMD Sathi, a multilingual web-based guidance portal designed to organize DMD-related educational and care-navigation information for parents and caregivers. The implemented prototype provides English, Hindi, and Marathi language support; child-profile setup; broad age-group organization for 2–5, 6–12, and 13–21 years; symptom and age guidance; nutrition planning with vegetarian/non-vegetarian options; exercise and physiotherapy educational resources; medicine information with generic/conventional and Ayurvedic/complementary-care categorization; emergency guidance; and a healthcare-facility map focused on Nagpur. The system is implemented as a client-side React and TypeScript web application using Vite and React Router. The design intentionally avoids presenting the portal as a diagnostic or prescribing system; it provides educational guidance and encourages consultation with qualified healthcare professionals. For context, a 2026 peer-reviewed Indian study estimated an Indian DMD burden of approximately 51,402 patients using a prevalence estimate of 7.1 cases per 100,000 males and India’s male population; this is an epidemiological estimate rather than a national patient registry count. The proposed portal aims to reduce information fragmentation and improve access to understandable, localized, and age-organized DMD care information for families.