Nov 23, 2020
Software Intelligence For Better Healthcare
Since I was a kid, I dreamt of becoming a Physician, I wanted to help people feel better, and help them get better.
Growing up, that plan didn’t pay off. instead, I studied Software Engineering and I built solid technical expertise, across many different coding stacks…
Yet I still have a constant feeling driving me into healthcare, and I do believe that the best way we can use technology for the good of humanity is by creating healthcare solutions.
Journey
In August 2020, I enrolled in a Software Engineering Bootcamp with Flatiron School, wanting to hone my skills, brush up on what I know, and learn modern technologies and coding practices.
For my last project, my passion for healthcare hit me again, so I wanted to build a solution that aims at easing people’s pain and struggles.
Ideation
I started with wanting to create an app to make patients' lives easier, help them while they are in need.
But that not being enough, I had to do a lot of research, mainly digging into what’s already been developed, and what kind of healthcare solutions already exist there, and what would my app’s added value be.
Although there are a lot of medical/healthcare-related apps out there, I was able to categorize them into the following:
1- Lifestyle:
Including meditation, diet and weight loss, sleep monitoring, sports, and fitness…
2- Pharmacy:
Including e-pharmacy apps, glossary apps, medical advice…
3- Hospital/Clinic selection and appointment management.
Niche Idea
After the market research I did, I noticed a lack of solutions offering post-appointment care. And I remembered how frustrating it is to be sent home with a prescribed treatment with the hope of feeling better the next day but not having those expectations actually met.
A patient feeling worse on the second day of treatment and struggling with whether to reach out to his provider or waiting is unnecessary stress to add to the patient’s illness.
So I came up with a new way to facilitate adherence to treatment and corresponding action automation. In my prototype, the solution sends automatic emails signaling a need for intervention, but in future versions where AI is added to the solution, the decisions will be more accurate and the actions can be more than just an automated email.
Prototype
Below is a recording of my solution, which I built using Ruby on Rails API for backend, React, and Redux for frontend, along with CSS3 for styling.
I also implemented JWT for authentication, automatic authentication, and authorization.
For automated emails, I used Rails’ action mailer.
I will be adding more features to this app, and I am planning on developing a PWA for better accessibility and a better chance of integration with mobile phone extensions that help measuring vitals at home.
Stay Tuned, I will be publishing updates in upcoming articles.
