SIH26230/MedTech / BioTech / HealthTech

Breath-Based Detection Device for Drug Consumption

Ministry of Home Affairs · Narcotics Control Bureau · Hardware

Teams already in: Not read yet
Buildable in 36 hours: Not decoded
Hard blockers: NoneNothing you must source first
Submissions close: 15 Sept9 days left

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Submit on sih.gov.in

Whether this suits your team

Why this fits you

This organisation declared winners on 10 problem statement(s) in SIH 2025. It has awarded 4 joint winner(s), so it sometimes splits a prize between two teams.

Not decoded yet

We have this problem statement but have not run it through our decode pass. The government’s own description is below, unchanged.

What they'll ask you

Generated from the brief's own wording and the competition's published rules — never from a guess about what this ministry prefers.

We have not run our decode pass over this one yet, so these are the questions asked of every team rather than questions about this problem statement. The organisers’ own description is on this page, unchanged.

Has any part of this been shown at a previous event, hackathon or college project?
The guidelines are explicit: your solution must not have appeared in any previous event or programme, of any sort. A recycled project is what a team under time pressure reaches for.
Where does your data come from — a published source, one you collect, or one you generate?
No dataset is attached to this problem statement, so sourcing it is part of the work and nobody told you that.
Why not use what already exists? Name the closest thing to this that is already running.
A team that has not named the alternative themselves is answering this for the first time in the room.

1 more— the ones a panel gets to if there is time

Which single thing will you demonstrate end to end, start to finish, with nothing skipped?

The data

What the organisers attached, and what the brief assumes you can get.

Dataset from the organisers: None attached
Does the brief need data?: Nothing in the text says it depends on a dataset we would have to find.

Also from Ministry of Home Affairs

Same organisation, same year. Reading two of theirs tells you more about what they care about than reading one.

Take this to an AI

Pick what you are about to do and copy the prompt. It carries the organisers' own wording, the constraints they never spell out, and an instruction not to invent requirements they never set.

Who has this problem, what already exists, and what you would have to find out.

# Context: India's Smart India Hackathon 2026

I am on a student team entering SIH 2026. Problem statement SIH26230, set by Ministry of Home Affairs.
Its official title, word for word: "Breath-Based Detection Device for Drug Consumption"
Theme: MedTech / BioTech / HealthTech. Category: hardware.

## The organisers' full description, verbatim

<p><strong>Background:</strong></p>

<p>

Law enforcement agencies currently lack a reliable, portable, non-invasive method to detect recent drug consumption in the field, comparable to a breathalyzer used for alcohol detection. Existing methods — urine or blood testing — are invasive, time-consuming, and unsuitable for rapid field screening. Breath, saliva, and sweat are known to contain biomarkers correlating with recent drug use, but no indigenous, field-ready device presently exists to read them reliably.

</p>

<p><strong>Description:</strong></p>

<p>

Participants are to design and build a prototype handheld device capable of detecting the presence of common narcotic substances (such as opioids, cannabis, and synthetic drugs) through breath-sample analysis, using electrochemical or equivalent sensing technology.

</p>

<p>The device should:</p>

<ul>

<li>Provide a rapid, near real-time result at the point of testing.</li>

<li>Be portable and operable by field personnel with minimal training.</li>

<li>Indicate a clear positive / negative / inconclusive result.</li>

<li>Be built using accessible sensor components suitable for a working prototype demonstration.</li>

</ul>

<p><strong>Expected Deliverables:</strong></p>

<p>

A working hardware prototype capable of demonstrating breath-sample analysis and producing a result, along with a brief technical explanation of the sensing method used and its accuracy on a provided or self-generated test set.

</p>

<p><strong>Note to Participants:</strong></p>

<p>

This is a proof-of-concept prototype intended to demonstrate technical feasibility. It is not expected to be a forensically validated or field-certified device at the end of the hackathon.

</p>

-->

Background:

Law enforcement agencies currently lack a reliable, portable, non-invasive method to detect recent drug consumption in the field, comparable to a breathalyzer used for alcohol detection. Existing methods — urine or blood testing — are invasive, time-consuming, and unsuitable for rapid field screening. Breath, saliva, and sweat are known to contain biomarkers correlating with recent drug use, but no indigenous, field-ready device presently exists to read them reliably.

Description:

Participants are to design and build a prototype handheld device capable of detecting the presence of common narcotic substances (such as opioids, cannabis, and synthetic drugs) through breath-sample analysis, using electrochemical or equivalent sensing technology.

The device should:

Provide a rapid, near real-time result at the point of testing.

Be portable and operable by field personnel with minimal training.

Indicate a clear positive / negative / inconclusive result.

Be built using accessible sensor components suitable for a working prototype demonstration.

Expected Deliverables:

A working hardware prototype capable of demonstrating breath-sample analysis and producing a result, along with a brief technical explanation of the sensing method used and its accuracy on a provided or self-generated test set.

Note to Participants:

This is a proof-of-concept prototype intended to demonstrate technical feasibility. It is not expected to be a forensically validated or field-certified device at the end of the hackathon.
## Constraints that are not negotiable

- The judged build is a prototype demonstrated in roughly 36 hours by students, not a product.
- A jury evaluates it against this problem statement's own wording, not against general merit.
- We submit on sih.gov.in; the problem statement number and title above must match exactly.
- Your solution must not have appeared in any previous event or programme, of any sort.
- This is a hardware problem statement, so a demo needs physical components we source ourselves.

## What I want from you

1. Who actually has this problem in India, and what they do about it today.
2. What already exists — government systems, open-source projects, published research — that we should not rebuild.
3. For each item under 'what the brief never says', what the realistic answer is likely to be and how I could verify it.
4. The two or three things about this domain that a student team would get wrong without local knowledge.
## How to answer

- Everything above between quotation marks is the organisers' own wording. Treat it as the requirement.
- Do NOT invent requirements the brief does not state. If something matters and is not stated, say so and ask me, rather than assuming.
- Where you are inferring rather than reading, mark it as your inference.
- Do not guess what this ministry wants from its name. Its wording above is the only evidence.

---
Problem statement facts assembled by Wynit from Ministry of Home Affairs's published brief for SIH 2026.
The plain-English summary, the list of parts and the evaluator read are our interpretation of that text; the quoted title and the full description are theirs.

The government's original description (445 words)

Background: Law enforcement agencies currently lack a reliable, portable, non-invasive method to detect recent drug consumption in the field, comparable to a breathalyzer used for alcohol detection. Existing methods — urine or blood testing — are invasive, time-consuming, and unsuitable for rapid field screening. Breath, saliva, and sweat are known to contain biomarkers correlating with recent drug use, but no indigenous, field-ready device presently exists to read them reliably. Description: Participants are to design and build a prototype handheld device capable of detecting the presence of common narcotic substances (such as opioids, cannabis, and synthetic drugs) through breath-sample analysis, using electrochemical or equivalent sensing technology. The device should: <ul> <li>Provide a rapid, near real-time result at the point of testing.</li> <li>Be portable and operable by field personnel with minimal training.</li> <li>Indicate a clear positive / negative / inconclusive result.</li> <li>Be built using accessible sensor components suitable for a working prototype demonstration.</li> </ul> Expected Deliverables: A working hardware prototype capable of demonstrating breath-sample analysis and producing a result, along with a brief technical explanation of the sensing method used and its accuracy on a provided or self-generated test set. Note to Participants: This is a proof-of-concept prototype intended to demonstrate technical feasibility. It is not expected to be a forensically validated or field-certified device at the end of the hackathon. --> Background: Law enforcement agencies currently lack a reliable, portable, non-invasive method to detect recent drug consumption in the field, comparable to a breathalyzer used for alcohol detection. Existing methods — urine or blood testing — are invasive, time-consuming, and unsuitable for rapid field screening. Breath, saliva, and sweat are known to contain biomarkers correlating with recent drug use, but no indigenous, field-ready device presently exists to read them reliably. Description: Participants are to design and build a prototype handheld device capable of detecting the presence of common narcotic substances (such as opioids, cannabis, and synthetic drugs) through breath-sample analysis, using electrochemical or equivalent sensing technology. The device should: Provide a rapid, near real-time result at the point of testing. Be portable and operable by field personnel with minimal training. Indicate a clear positive / negative / inconclusive result. Be built using accessible sensor components suitable for a working prototype demonstration. Expected Deliverables: A working hardware prototype capable of demonstrating breath-sample analysis and producing a result, along with a brief technical explanation of the sensing method used and its accuracy on a provided or self-generated test set. Note to Participants: This is a proof-of-concept prototype intended to demonstrate technical feasibility. It is not expected to be a forensically validated or field-certified device at the end of the hackathon.