From Lego to life saving innovation: How this homeschooler reimagined laryngoscope for better airway care

5 min readPuneUpdated: Jun 6, 2026 11:03 PM IST

Dr. Shiv Singh (centre) Consultant Anaesthesiologist, Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospital Trust who takes difficult airway workshops in India . (Left) Tej Patel, Final year student at NID Ahmedabad who is also involved in the startup and Dr Maanas Jain (Special Arrangement)

Maanas Jain had completed Class VI when his parents moved from Bengaluru to Pune and chose homeschooling. His father Prof Manish Jain joined noted science educator Padmashree Arvind Gupta at Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Pune to develop educational toys and for the next three years Maanas spent countless hours building and experimenting with Lego-based machines.

This homeschooler who has been passionate about innovating since he was a child decided to appear for Std X- IGCSE board and with a keen interest in medicine shifted to the CBSE board and later graduated as a doctor from AIIMS, Jodhpur. It was during his medical training when failed intubation attempts using direct laryngoscopy on a critically ill patient had a profound impact on him. Maanas decided to develop a Universal Video-Enabling Attachment for Laryngoscopes (UVEAL), a device aimed at improving airway management and patient outcomes.

Device gets CDSCO approval

In March this year, the device received licensing approval from the CDSCO, paving the way for its commercial launch. Within just two months, it has been procured by at least 80 doctors, marking an important milestone in Maanas’s journey from a curious young innovator to a physician-inventor addressing real-world clinical challenges. “During my internship, it was shocking for me to witness one of my patients nearly die due to multiple failed intubation attempts with direct laryngoscopy, before being intubated with a videolaryngoscope. Videolaryngoscopes unfortunately are scarce in most hospitals in India, due to their extremely high cost, usually in lakhs of rupees. And so, when I graduated, I set myself a goal to change this. I spent the next 2 years developing UVEAL. The cost starts at under Rs 10,000 and attaches to standard laryngoscopes doctors already own and convert it into a videolaryngoscope that otherwise is expensive,” Maanas said.

When contacted Dr Shiv Kumar Singh, consultant anaesthesiologist, Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospital Trust told The Indian Express that UVEAL was a practical innovation in airway management. At a workshop in April this year at Ahmedabad, several doctors had hands-on experience intubating with UVEAL using mannequins. “What stood out was the relevance to real-world practice, particularly in resource constrained settings,” Dr Singh said. The expert even took to social media to announce plans to incorporate UVEAL into the annual airway teaching day where it can enhance demonstration, supervision and skill acquisition in a cost-effective manner.

Among the doctors who is now consistently using the device is Dr Ankit Chauhan, senior consultant anaesthesiologist at Apollo Hospital, Ahmedabad. When contacted he said there are regular conventional laryngoscopes to perform airway examination. “However, by attaching the video camera into this system has made it simple to use. What’s more there is good visibility due to the high resolution camera and it is a compatible fit on the conventional system. I have been using it for the last two months,” Dr Chauhan said.

Challenges

However he is now coming to terms with a harsh reality about challenges that startups face. “After several interactions with experts in the medical fraternity, I realised that while doctors and administrators commend the effort, very few actually purchase it despite it being a device relevant to their domain and very low-cost. For my startup, which focuses on low-cost devices, it is actually purchasing the device, trying/using it, and spreading the word which really makes a difference, as doctors such as Shiv Singh(a UK based anesthesiologist) have done,” Maanas said. However the doctor is hoping to be able to convert more ideas into cost-effective medical devices.

Understand how things work

His parents, Prof Manish Jain and Rashmi Goyal(an IIT Kanpur and Delhi College of Engineering alumnus respectively) who moved back to India after spending ten years in Silicon Valley Bay area recalled that they had brought 32 kg of mixed lego. “There were all these small parts to create any machine on his own,” Prof Jain said. Inspired by John Holt, a prominent advocate of homeschooling in the late 70s and early 80s, Maanas’s parents gave him the option of homeschooling. “He would spend most of his time building machines in Lego right from an 18-wheeler truck called Optimus Prime which after 250 transformation steps became a humanoid robot to a mechanically-programmable letter writing machine. This was built with over 2000 pieces and no electronics. The machine could be programmed with a physical analog of code which was then read by a mechanical processor and directed the machine on as to which letter it should write,” Prof Jain who has been instrumental in starting the Centre for Creative Learning at IIT, Gandhingar remembered. While Maanas will soon be joining Rutgers NJMS University for a residency in internal medicine and learn from the innovative culture in the United States, his father also added that his son’s goal was to understand how medical devices work and then figure out how to make them affordable so everyone can access them.

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Anuradha Mascarenhas is a Senior Editor at The Indian Express, based in Pune. With a career spanning three decades, she is one of the most respected voices in Indian journalism regarding healthcare, science and environment and research developments. She also takes a keen interest in covering women's issues .

Professional Background

Education: A gold medalist in Communication and Journalism from Savitribai Phule Pune University and a Master’s degree in Literature.

Author: She authored the biography At The Wheel Of Research, which chronicles the life and work of Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, the former Chief Scientist at the WHO.

Key Focus: She combines scientific accuracy with storytelling, translating complex medical research into compelling public and human-interest narratives.

Awards and Recognition

Anuradha has won several awards including the Press Council of India's national award for excellence in journalism under the gender based reporting category in 2019 and the Laadli Media award (gender sensitivity -2024). A recipient of the Lokmat journalism award (gender category-2022), she was also shortlisted for the RedInk awards for excellence in journalism-2021. Her debut book At The Wheel Of Research, an exclusive biography of Dr Soumya Swaminathan the inaugural chief scientist of World Health Organisation was also nominated in the Popular Choice Category of JK Paper AUTHER awards. She has also secured competitive fellowships including the Laadli Media Fellowship (2022), the Survivors Against TB – New Research in TB Media Fellowship (2023) and is part of the prestigious 2025 India Cohort of the WomenLift Health Leadership Journey.”

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