Research Papers

Abstract

Sign languages serve as essential communication systems for individuals with hearing and speech impairments. However, digital linguistic dataset resources for underrepresented sign languages, such as Nepali Sign Language (NSL), remain scarce. This study introduces the first benchmark dataset for NSL, consisting of 36 gesture classes with 1,500 samples per class, designed to capture the structural and visual features of the language. To evaluate recognition performance, we fine-tuned MobileNetV2 and ResNet50 architectures on the dataset, achieving classification accuracies of 90.45% and 88.78%, respectively. These findings demonstrate the effectiveness of convolutional neural networks in sign recognition tasks, particularly within low-resource settings. To the best of our knowledge, this work represents the first systematic effort to construct a benchmark dataset and assess deep learning approaches for NSL recognition, highlighting the potential of transfer learning and fine-tuning for advancing research in underexplored sign languages.

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Abstract

Conversational agents are increasingly being explored to support healthcare delivery, particularly in resource-constrained settings such as rural Nepal. Large-scale conversational models typically rely on internet connectivity and cloud infrastructure, which may not be accessible in rural areas due to limited electricity and network coverage. In this study, we fine-tuned DialoGPT, a lightweight generative dialogue model that can operate offline, on a synthetically constructed dataset of doctor-patient interactions covering ten common diseases prevalent in rural Nepal, including common cold, seasonal fever, diarrhea, typhoid fever, gastritis, food poisoning, malaria, dengue fever, tuberculosis, and pneumonia. Despite being trained on a limited, domain-specific dataset, the fine-tuned model produced coherent, contextually relevant, and medically appropriate responses, demonstrating an understanding of symptoms, disease context, and empathetic communication. These results highlight the adaptability of compact, offline-capable dialogue models and the effectiveness of targeted datasets for domain adaptation in low-resource healthcare environments, offering promising directions for future rural medical conversational AI.

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