COVID-19 Trials by SMS

Makes it simple for physicians and patients to receive information on nearby COVID-19 trials

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Inspiration

Finding clinical trials is hard. You have to find a reputable website, search for trials, try to figure out how to search by disease, filter based on your location, etc... It's time consuming and frustrating, and for folks who are looking for a clinical trial for COVID-19, time is often in short supply.

What it does

Thus, I created a small app where you can send your five digit ZIP code via SMS (US only for now) and you will receive an SMS back showing you the five closest COVID-19 clinical trials to your location. You can also filter based on keywords you send. For example, if you want to look for a patient registries, you can send "Keywords: registry". You just have to text 540-701-0519 -- 10519 as in CV-19.

How I built it

Built in Node.js, using vanilla Express server, with all code written in Typescript. Getting to and from SMS just requires Twilio API with ngrok tunnel. The data comes from my current project: https://rightct.us, which uses a Loopback server as the primary data API.

Challenges I ran into

My background is primarily on the front-end, so getting out of the standard web frameworks and putting together a pure Typescript project was a big change for me. The documentation from Twilio is great, so getting the SMS functionality up and running was not too bad. My data API for RightCT is simple REST API, which made it easy to grab the data. The primary challenge is that Google's servers are slammed right now, meaning that I have to run the server from my home at the moment, but hope to move it over soon.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I unfortunately did not have a lot of time over the weekend, so I was forced to create this app all within twelve hours on Sunday. It is not quite as robust as I would want it, and I have ideas for additional features I would prefer to implement, but I am proud that I was able to get a functioning version out the door in one day.

What I learned

This is my first hackathon, so I was impressed by the massive response. Clearly developers are excited and willing to dedicate their time to making the world a better place. I am just happy to have been a part of this event.

What's next for COVID-19 Trials by SMS

Planned future features:

  • Integration with rightct.us, so that you can view the COVID-19 results in browser
  • Allow users to 'page' through trial results via SMS (right now it just delivers the closest five trials)
  • Broader support for other diseases
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