Inspiration
As aspiring inventors and engineers, we wanted to achieve the goal every engineer and inventors dreams of: creating a society without worries or inconvenience. Looking at different ideas, we determined the medical issues are a major area of worry. As we looked further into the problems in the field, we realized that people often are most affected when they have a loved one requiring 24-hour care and attention. This is difficult because it creates tension, can ruin careers, and be extremely expensive. Finding all this out, we decided that what we wanted to ease the burden of constant care for both parties and even implement functions not possible with only human caregivers.
What it does
Butler is a voice-interaction software that talks to patients. It keeps track of their medicine throughout the day, ensuring all medication is taken, and none are taken multiple times. The system is also developed in a format to encourage others to implement more functions, creating a full system that can serve every need from patients and close acquaintances.
How we built it
We used JSON and Node.js to develop an Alexa skill for voice-interaction. JSON was used to communicate between the Node.js code and Amazon Alexa. Then we used Node.js to organize information and provide necessary outputs to Alexa. Finally, we used dynamoDB to host the database and store values for next use.
Challenges we ran into
The main challenge we faced was Alexa’s relative inability to store data between sessions. We were unable to access the session attributes to constantly append new user data despite massive effort. In the end, despite rapidly falling morale, we finally figured out an alternative; we managed to save interaction data to Amazon’s dynamoD, thus enabling us to do the rest of the project
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud of the intuitive user interface and user friendly nature of our software. Our Alexa skill will read back the list of drugs that a person needs as the caretaker is saying them, helping the caretaker remember the list. Alexa will give user intuitive messages when the user tries to do an illegal operation like add a duplicate drug to the list or remove a drug that is not on the list. Most of all, we are proud of how far we went in the project. None of us have ever had experience using Alexa, JSON, or even JavaScript. Still, we were able to develop a system exactly as we envisioned.
What we learned
We became more familiar with javascript, a language that we had little experience with previously. We also learned more about the usage of json files to send data, and the architecture of the Amazon Echo.
What's next for Butler- Bringing True 24-Hour Assistance to Healthcare
We plan to develop many more features, located on our google documents under the section ways to cope, and our github page. Some of the newer features include: -Sleep schedule -Socialize with user to prevent of memory loss -Send important diagnostics to patient family and caregiver -Automatic reminders -Personalized messages to calm users -Database of medication -Patient profiles added to database -Call 911 in case of emergency
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