COVCare

A COVID Quarantine and Isolation Home Healthcare Service

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Inspiration

As the number of patients of COVID-19 continues to increase at an unpredictable rate, the number of beds in hospitals and centers set up by the government fall short of the requirement by a huge margin. The condition is so severe that the reports indicating the incidents of patients being kept on streets have surfaced recently. All patients are not required to be kept in specialized care units. Home quarantine and isolation with proper guidelines can be implemented in these less severe cases. This project is created to bridge the gap between the medical service provider and the patient.

What it does

Specialized care is expensive and not required by everyone, this will provide an inexpensive alternative to conventional methods. -The extreme pressure on hospital beds will be reduced and more beds will be available to those in actual need. -Early and efficient intervention and identification of suspected patients will help reduce the spreading of this highly contagious infection.

This service has two interfaces, which we will individually deal with in the subsequent sections: Patient service side The patients can install the android app and create an account. There is a choice between three categories which were already mentioned in the target user section. The patient then creates an account with the hospital of their choice. If the hospital is available then the patient can log in the app using their phone number as password, which can be changed later. The patient (or an active relative or nurse) can update the medical parameters viz, BP, Temperature, SPO2, Respiratory Rate, and AVPU value. The values entered are timely updated in the database and are monitored by the hospital on the website. Moreover, each parameter has a set of information about it for instance, What is blood pressure?, How do we measure it? and other guidelines to use the instrument along with links to online tutorials to do so.

Hospital service side Hospitals can register on the website by filling the sign-up form and can approve the registration of patients. The dashboard of every hospital displays a list of patients by sorting them on the basis of their MEWS, displaying the more severe patients above and then the less severe once. The doctors can click on the specific patient account to see more details regarding his medical condition. Seeing the MEWS score and SPO2 values the doctors can decide which patients to immediately shift to the hospital.

How we built it

As mentioned above, we have two sides of this project i.e. app and the website and all the technical details are mentioned below: Tech stack used: -Java: the android app has been written in the Java language with the help of Android Studio. -Django: the website is written using Django as the backend framework. -Bootstrap: the frontend of the website is written using bootstrap. -Firebase: Firebase has been used as the cloud backend service for the app. -PostgreSQL: the database management system of the website.

Challenges we ran into

COVCare, as a service, can act as a bridge between medical practitioners and the patients. In order to accomplish this, this service requires active participation of the administration, hospitals and the patients. Fabrication of such a system was a major issue. We agreed upon a system of mobile application and a website to best suit our purpose. We had to contact doctors to get real time information regarding the guidelines and monitoring protocols implementable currently.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Certain features of the application that we are proud of and which make this project stand out are: -This project not only helps the patient to connect with the doctors but also makes it easy for the doctors to analyze and monitor their patients. -This project is very user friendly, the patients are provided with ample information so as to measure the parameters, they are provided with video links as well. The patients are reminded through notifications to fill in the data. -No unnecessary information has been asked and the forms are kept informationally tight.

What we learned

This project requires the implementation of Django, BOOTSTRAP, and Java. We learned a great deal about the implementation of these languages to suit our requirements. Several bugs we encountered helped us to engage more with the project. Along with these technical skills we also acquainted ourselves with medical details regarding the coronavirus monitoring, classification of patients in L1, L2, L3 as well as people qualifying for quarantine. This project also motivated us to learn basic skills like Prioritization (80-20 Pareto Principle), team-work, video-making, and a variety of soft skills.

What's next for COV Care

Several essential features can be implemented to make this service more useful. Some of the various features we could not include due to time constraints- -The application can be expanded to accommodate an information portal rendering important and correct information regarding COVID-19 to dispel all the fake news regarding it. -A Patient-Doctor chat feature can be introduced to enable direct communication between doctor and patient. -Notification service can be implemented to notify the worsening condition of a patient to the doctor. -General improvement of layout and aesthetics. -Some additional features to make the application easier to use. -Expansion of the website to allow hospitals to monitor L2 patients in wards and to be notified when the patient needs to be moved to ICU.

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