About the Project
Inspiration
Prescription drug prices in the U.S. are among the highest in the world. Many people don’t realize that cheaper, generic alternatives exist—and those who do often struggle to find accurate price comparisons. We built MedMatch to make that process simple, transparent, and accessible for everyone. Our goal was to help users save money, make informed health decisions, and improve medication access through technology.
What We Learned
- How to rapidly prototype a full-stack web application with real-world use cases
- How to work with MongoDB schemas for structured health-related data
- Deploying to Render and Vercel while managing environment variables and CORS
- Designing for usability and accessibility across devices
How We Built It
We used the MERN stack:
- Frontend: React.js for the UI, Axios for API calls, and CSS for responsive design
- Backend: Node.js + Express.js for REST API development
- Database: MongoDB (via Mongoose) for storing medications, generics, and pricing info
- Deployment: Vercel (frontend) and Render (backend)
- We also implemented mock price fetching logic to simulate real-world pharmacy APIs like GoodRx
Challenges We Faced
- We couldn’t access live pharmacy APIs (many require paid access), so we created a mock scraping layer to simulate price comparisons
- Ensuring the UI worked well on both desktop and mobile, especially for users with limited tech experience
- Balancing speed and simplicity—making the app functional without over-engineering it
- Making medication search tolerant to misspellings and partial names (basic fuzzy search)
Impact
We believe MedMatch could be a meaningful tool for underserved communities, the uninsured, or anyone looking to make smart, affordable choices about their prescriptions. With future additions like user accounts, price alerts, and real-time data integrations, MedMatch has the potential to scale into a full-fledged healthcare savings platform.
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