Inspiration
At the Post-Operative Care track session with John Varallo, Global Director for Safe Surgery at Jhpiego, we were shocked by the lack of human resources in third world countries. It is very common that facilities have a nurse to patient ratio as high as 1:30. The nurse also has a few nurse aides helping to oversee patients; however, these aides have limited knowledge since they may have only attended a few months of training. They are often aware that an issue is present, but are not sure how severe it is and if they should contact someone higher up in the medical hierarchy. This issue sparked our idea to create AideSquared to assist the nurse aides in this decision making process.
What it does
AideSquared is a voice application that combats the human resource issue in post-operative care. The device assists nurse aides by determining the urgency of the issue at hand. The application prompts the aide with questions regarding symptoms and calculates how severe a patients objective and subjective health is. Objective health is the physical health of a patient (ie blood pressure, heart rate, etc.), while subjective health focuses on the way a patient feels (ie. pain, nausea etc.).
How we built it
After generating our idea, we brainstormed different questions a nurse aide would potentially encounter when assisting patients on rounds. We took our list to multiple mentors in the medical field to receive more insight on the type of questions we should be asking. Once we thought we had finalized our idea, we began coding an application for Alexa. Shortly after beginning this phase, we realized our framework was flawed and we needed more guidance from a professional in the field. At this point, we called Dr. John Varallo. He provided us with much needed guidance and helped us to finalize our model. We also switched to Alexa Developer Console for more versatility. After receiving this input, we modified our framework and finished developing our Javascript application.
Challenges we ran into
We faced a multitude of difficulties this weekend, as it was our first hackathon and we had limited experience both technically and in the medical field. One of the primary issues we encountered was our limited medical knowledge base. We were unsure about the types of questions we should be asking the nurse aides and had lots of back and forth discussion about this issue. We solved this by seeking professional help from several doctors in the field. Another primary problem was with the integration of our JavaScript code with the Alexa Developer Console. We had never used JavaScript, GitHub, or Alexa Developer Console prior to MedHacks. Everything had been running smoothly, however towards the end of the hackathon, we reached an issue with updating the code in the console to the newest version. We spent a long time trying to resolve this, but were ultimately able to develop a full functioning prototype in time for judging. We learned a lot in the process and are thankful for the skills we’ve gained from this experience.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud that our prototype is able to tackle both the understaffing issue as well as the medical hierarchy. We were able to get our prototype working on an Echo Dot and are proud of the fact that we overcame both our lack of technical and medical knowledge.
What we learned
Since this was our first Hackathon, we were able to problem solve with peers and get perspectives from other university students around the world. MedHacks was great in providing a space for students to work in diverse groups and find ways to combat important healthcare issues of the 21st century. It was a rewarding experience to see so many young innovators coming together to make a difference.
What's next for AideSquared
We would like to be able to utilize WhatsApp to send messages about patient status to doctors and nurses given severe input from nurse aides. If there is a medium concern for the patients wellbeing it will send a text to the nurse or doctor updating them with their status. If there is a high concern, then the device will call the nurse or doctor on duty immediately. If implemented on a wide scale, we would remove the need for wifi connection that Alexa typically requires by having our application be pre-downloaded and only utilize cellular data for WhatsApp communication.
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