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Prototype
UPDATE: We won Best Shopping Hack Sponsored by Honey and Best use of MongoDB Atlas Sponsored by MLH! Thank you to the judges and mentors that helped us develop this project!
Why
9x
This is how much the price of a procedure can vary between different hospitals within the same city. That is nine times an already expensive cost. Until now, the prices of hospital services have been hard to find and compare. Since the average customer is not aware of the prices beforehand, they are also not able to make an informed decision. Once they receive the bill, it can be difficult to comprehend and negotiate the costs. This results in unnecessary high healthcare costs. People are able to easily compare prices for restaurants, hotels, and flights - so why not do the same with hospitals? A new law was implemented in 2019 saying that hospitals were required to display their price list on their website. Therefore, the information is available but it is typically portrayed through a spreadsheet in an obscure location. When located, the information is difficult to comprehend due to the vast amount of data and terms that are non-intuitive.
What it does
We have created MediBase, a website that gives easy accessibility to the prices for different healthcare services and compares them with nearby hospitals.
How it's built
We used google maps API to collect names, locations, and ratings of different nearby hospitals. To display this information in a user-friendly way, we utilized html, javascript, CSS, and node.js. To parse the pricing data, we used Ruby to extract the information regarding the cost of specified procedures at each hospital within a given range. In addition, we used MongoDB to hold the information.
Challenges and learnings
Working with Google Maps API we encountered some challenges in modifying the layout and structure of Google Maps data to fit our application. Through this project, we learned how to implement RESTFuL API in our web development.
Accomplishments that we are proud of
Being able to parse the data and implement it in our frontend application was a great accomplishment to us as we are relatively new to front-end development. Also, the fact, that we managed to do so with little to no knowledge about Google Maps API, we feel we learned a lot during the development process.
Conclusion
Taking inspiration from existing methods of displaying comprehensive data, like yelp, we saw an opportunity to apply a similar method to the healthcare industry. Using open sources already available in Google Maps and combining it with price information, we were able to create a new, accessible way to review healthcare options. In the future, including insurances in the comparison could help the customer make better decisions and get a clearer understanding of their final cost. We also see the value of this website for other stakeholders such as insurance companies who would benefit from their customers making more informed decisions. With this website, we hope to help others gain awareness of their healthcare costs. Additionally, we hope that exposing the prices will eventually increase the competition amongst hospitals and result in fair prices.
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