Inspiration
When brainstorming cool apps to build for the Make School Summer Academy, my dad and I had a wonderful thought. What if I built the IOS platform for his established med-tech company? This way I was going to be able to gain some experience through building something that will definitely be used, and working with an actual team of developers. Additionally, I might even be able to make some money from this job.
What it does
AccuVax units are smart refrigerators for vaccine that store valuable data such as inventory and temperature in the cloud. My app utilizes these cloud capabilities allowing doctors and admins to monitor their inventory and view temperature with their mobile device from wherever they may be. For example, if the head doctor at a local office needed to see whether or not he needed to order more vaccine for the upcoming week, he could open my app, login to his AccuVax account, and within a few taps know how much vaccine he has to order.
How I built it
In order to be able to get AccuVax DATA, I had to work with a team of developers at the company in order to make correct API requests. They gave me the tools I needed to ensure that my API calls were correct. This included authentication headers along with various URL parameters such as kiosk_name and scope which allowed me to specify the scope of the history DATA for temperature I wished to receive. This could either be "day" or "week". Such help made API requests a breeze as the Alamofire cocoapod made it extremely easy to attach headers and parameters to URL requests. Other than the DATA, the rest of the app was engineered with standard IOS UIKit implementation with the exception of SwiftyJSON and the Charts cocoapods which allowed me to parse the response data from the various URL requests and display the temperature data in a nice, neat graph.
Challenges I ran into
Implementing refresh functionality was especially difficult as the code I originally wrote to make these requests was messy. This is because I wrote the API call requests in the scope of ViewControllers rather than in a separate helper file that had completion blocks attached to the functions. Thus, implementing such functionality took awhile as I had to find a way to work around my messy code.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
Seeing the data flow from my "dummy" AccuVax onto my iPhone had to be the best part of this whole process. After witnessing such flow occurring for the first time, I could truly tell that my app--something I built--was actually going to be useful for a good amount of people. That's the best feeling.
What I learned
I developed a bunch of skills through the creation of this app and the summer academy experience as a whole:
There is almost always a solution when it comes to a problem with your app. Perseverance is key.
The ability to network and talk with people about me and my app.
Working with professional developers which helped me to gain a great insight into the professional world as a whole.
Last but not least...THE ABILITY TO BUILD AN APP AND SHIP IT TO THE IOS APP STORE
What's next for AccuVax IOS Portal
Currently, my app only supports Inventory and Temperature DATA from AccuVax Units. However, the AccuVax machines can track a whole lot more. First, I hope to allow admins to add or delete doctors or nurses from their machines in order to manage who has access. Next, I hope to implement an alerts feature with my app in case something goes wrong with the AccuVax. Finally, I want to allow admins to view transaction history which is recorded every time a vaccine is loaded or dispensed to or from the AccuVax.
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