Inspiration
The COVID-19 pandemic has overwhelmed hospitals around the world, and the struggles healthcare workers are facing has drawn much attention. However, while many projects have been created to ease the stress on healthcare systems fighting COVID, many have overlooked the impact of the pandemic on patients whose appointments, procedures, and general health needs have been neglected. Furthermore, as the spread of the virus continues to slow, hundreds of thousands of patients around the world will be recovering from COVID and face their own unique challenges. Acuvere is meant to support everyday people with semi-urgent health conditions and COVID patients going through the rehabilitation process via an online platform centered around patient biometric data.
What It Does
This health care app allows for patients to share personal biometrics from common health devices (such as Fitbit, Google Fit, etc.) with health care providers, who can then recommend exercises for the patient to follow to improve their health, based on their current health condition and goals. Patients and doctors can also view the patient’s change in biometrics over time through graphs created by the app. Patients also have the ability to view upcoming appointments and contact their doctors directly within the app.
How We Built It
Acuvere was primarily built using Django. Jquery was used for some features, and the Plotly library was used for the graphs on the biometrics page.
Challenges We Ran Into
A major difficulty was gaining access to patient biometrics from an established Health API. After much thought and discussion, the Google Fit API was chosen for its compatibility with both Android and iOS and its expansive user base. However, Google required our domain to be verified from them in order to gain access to their biometrics. In addition, we needed to create an "OAuth Consent Screen" and Terms of Service in order to gain permission for the Google Fit users to access their data. Since at that time, our website was underdeveloped, we were unable to request verification for Google. Our solution to this problem was to create JSON file that modeled the data we would receive from Google Fit. This data included, heart rate, body temperature, oxygen saturation, and blood glucose, with daily food consumption, sleep, and exercise taken into consideration when creating the file.
We also encountered significant troubles with extending the default User model in Django and creating a user registration form that reflected these changes. However, with the help of StackOverflow and online blogs, we fixed this issue. After finishing the app, our initial plan was to deploy Acuvere to the web via Heroku, but we faced issues with the database, so we could not do so on time.
Accomplishments That We're Proud Of
Daniel - I am proud of working with Gaurav to learn about the patient rehabilitation process, design the user interface of the app, and build Acuvere from start to finish in a short time-frame.
What We Learned
Gaurav - I had never worked with JSON files in the past, so learning the format and purpose of JSON was new to me. In addition, with our initial idea of building the website to make the rehabilitation process more convenient for patients who were recovering from COVID-19, I learned many medical terms, the process of non-substance rehabilitation, and important respiratory exercises used in postcare.
What's Next For Acuvére
A major next step would be to implement a separate half of the app for healthcare providers. Currently, appointments and tasks must be manually inputted from the default Django administrator page. Implementing another type of user account for healthcare providers and creating a separate user interface would make using the app more convenient for doctors and resolve possible privacy issues. To improve the scalability of the app, we would also like to explore integrating the platform with popular electronic medical record systems. After the website is fully developed and successfully deployed, our goal is to become verified from Google to access patients biometrics from the Google Fit API. Afterwards, we plan on publicizing the website such that both patients and doctors can use our platform as a method of communication and biometric monitoring.
Try It Out
To test Acuvere, please visit http://acuvere.herokuapp.com. The username is "testuser" with "healthisgr8" as the password.
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