Allergeez

Inspiration

Even though we are not the people who have allergies, we have encountered countless people with different kinds of allergies, varying from a mild reaction from lactose intolerance to someone gasping for air as they find their EpiPen just to save themselves from peanuts. Unfortunately, there is no cure for allergies but to avoid the ingredients you're allergic to. We don't know any medicine or are qualified to create one, but we can code! So we thought, if we could save the people with allergies from the evil hidden allergens, then why not do it!

What it does

AllerGeez has a few interesting functions that can help inform people:

First of all is our search tab. There, you can see more information about allergies that make up to 90% of the food allergies. Our goal is to get you informed with reliable sources like Johns Hopkins and Mayo Clinic. There might be allergies you never heard of and some symptoms that you might have ignored. Being able to know and fully understand if you're allergic to anything or not can help prevent future accidents as mild symptoms can develop to be deadly situations depend on your age and your relationship with food. For example, some people develop allergic reactions to fish despite being exposed to fish their whole life.
Our scan app is where we're special. To make it easy for you, we let you take pictures of your dish through the app with the "Scan" function. As you send us the picture to analyze, our database, which is updated often will return to you what kind of dish you're eating and what are the possible allergies from that dish that you couldn't foresee. We help you to be more aware of what you're eating and we do encourage you to double-check with the chef if there is no fish broth, if you're allergic to seafood, or cheese, if you're allergic to dairy, in your favorite Carbonara Spaghetti.
Finally, your profile will be in the third tab. This tab will be composed of your name and age as that is our only concern when it comes to allergies. We have a check list of YOUR allergies so that we can personalize your experience in Allergeez. We also have a DISCLAIMER, so please make sure you read it before going deeply into the app. Lastly, please tell us your main concerns or questions at CONTACT US. We would love to talk to you!

How we built it

We planned out all the desired features ahead of time in a google doc. We utilized Flutter's three-tab structure to implement our desired features, working on each tab individually.

Challenges we ran into

Linking and implementing the camera feature in the app to the Google Cloud API was the one feature we were not able to implement.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Our group was comprised of complete beginners or had very limited knowledge of app development yet we were able to create a functioning app with many of our desired features.

What we learned

Since we were unfamiliar with how Flutter widgets worked, we got help from mentors to add external links to websites that provide information about food allergies. Coming into this project with little knowledge of app development (creating coding projects in general), we learned everything from how to run an Android app emulator to how to code and run an Android app using Dart and Flutter to the breadth of functions and widgets available within Flutter. We also learned about how apps are organized internally and some members were introduced to AutoML for the very first time.

What's next for AllerGeez

Implementing the camera scanning feature to link the Google Cloud as we originally hoped to do. We also want to add a barcode scanning feature for people with visual impairments (or just don't want to squint at the ingredient label) to be able to quickly assess if they can eat a certain packaged food. Another feature would personalize the user experience by saving previously scanned foods and medical history. We also wanted to allow the user to see a generic food profile when they scan a barcode or a food dish. Additional expansions could allow for vegan and vegetarian tags for food groups. Lastly, implementing a pop-up function that asks the user if they either have their EpiPen with them or if they have a plan in case they have an allergic reaction.