AhorraMed

💡 Inspiration

In Latin America, medicine prices can vary wildly within just a few city blocks. To make matters worse, outdated laws often protect manufacturers and distributors, maintaining a price monopoly that has lasted for decades.

"Because pharmaceutical 'strategies' make it nearly impossible to check prices online, we realized that a crowdsourced solution is the only way to give power back to the patients."

AhorraMed was born to break this information asymmetry and help people find the best prices in their immediate area.

🚀 What it does

AhorraMed is a community-driven platform where users contribute price data to help others save money. Key features include:

• AI-Powered Reporting: Users can submit reports via voice commands or by taking a photo of their receipt (OCR), making the process frictionless.
• Comparison Engine: Instantly find cheaper generic alternatives for brand-name medicines.
• Proximity Search: Using geolocation, the app finds the cheapest options within a specific radius.
• Smart Alerts: A dashboard that highlights significant price drops and community-reported shortages.
• Gamification: Users earn reputation points and badges for contributing verified data.

🛠️ How we built it

The project was built using a Vibe Coding workflow, focusing on rapid AI-integrated development. We prioritized the logic behind price verification and savings calculations to ensure the data remains reliable.

To ensure data quality, we implemented a mathematical check for price outliers. If a reported price \(P_{r}\) deviates significantly from the community average \(\mu\), it is flagged for verification:

$$ |P_{r} - \mu| > 0.5\mu $$

We also display the percentage saved for users using the following formula:

$$ \text{Savings } \% = \left( \frac{\text{Brand Price} - \text{Generic Price}}{\text{Brand Price}} \right) \times 100 $$

🚧 Challenges we ran into

The biggest hurdle was data accessibility. There is no public API for official medicine registration databases in our region. We had to work with static data exports and build a custom parsing system to ensure our product catalog stayed accurate despite the lack of live official support.

🏆 Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of building a fully functional mockup that serves as a robust proof of concept. Integrating OCR and geolocation into a cohesive project proved that complex AI features can be implemented quickly to solve real-world social issues.

📖 What we learned

Building AhorraMed taught us that bringing an idea to life is easier than ever with modern AI tools. It opens up massive opportunities for innovation in fields like healthcare and social justice where transparency has historically been suppressed.

⏭️ What's next for AhorraMed

• [ ] Funding: Pitching the idea to investors to transition from a mockup to a live solution.
• [ ] Pharmacy Integration: Creating a dashboard for local pharmacies to update their stock legally.
• [ ] Push Notifications: Alerting users the moment a medicine they need drops in price.

Tech Stack Summary

AhorraMed: Transparency for a healthier community.

Built With

• google-cloud-vision-api-(ocr)
• google-gemini-api
• google-maps-platform-(geocoding-&-distance-matrix)
• lucide
• next.js
• openai-whisper
• postgresql
• python
• react
• tailwind-css