Inspiration
We wanted to increase information accessibility in the health field with our current COVID-19 pandemic.
What it does
Given the user query asking about the number of COVID-19 cases in a particular location, it returns this number.
How I built it
Using the Alexa Skills Kit SDK as well as AWS Lambda, we built functionality to take in user queries, parse them, retrieve data about COVID-19 cases from an API called Covid API using HTTP Get requests, and return an Alexa response string detailing the retrieved information.
Challenges I ran into
- Configuring the Alexa Developer Console and SDK because it was new to all of us
- Using asynchronous functions to retrieve external data
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
- We were able to have Alexa respond to user queries with relevant information
What I learned
- We were able to connect and retrieve data from an external API
- We learned how to make our own Alexa Skill :)
What's next for Alexa COVID Tracker
- implementing the ability for users to undergo a self-assessment of symptoms
- have additional recommendations and resources, such as testing locations, returned to them -- this can be expanded to include other COVID related metrics, such as mask utilization information or location specific recovery rate
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