Cura | Devpost

Inspiration

We all felt a program that checked medication interactions was both practical and helpful in the daily lives of people. Not only this, but we found this would be an equally fun and challenging undertaking. As aspiring computer science students, we found an opportunity to be able to collaborate with fellow peers and put our knowledge to the test would allow for new learning opportunities.

What it does

Cura allows users to put in their medications and see if any of the entered medications interact with one another by accessing the National Library of Medicine database (API). If a medication does interact, Cura will flag this tell the user how many interactions were found and prompt the user to call their doctor.

How we built it

We used Python and APIs to be able to pull drug names and identification numbers. Our first function prompts the user to enter drug names. More than one drug can be entered. Once the user has completed this step, the next function retrieves a drug id that is used to find interactions with the National Library of Medicine API. After this, the final function narrows down the the amount of interactions found between the drug names entered (JavaScript was useful to help be able to parse through the data on Python). The function then takes this information and lets the user know how many interactions were found and with which medications. If any interactions were found, the program warns the user to consult their doctor.

Challenges we ran into

One of the biggest challenges we ran into was how to use APIs within python and how to parse through the JSON files. As mentioned within our methods, we needed JavaScript to help use visualize what we needed to do with the JSON files in order to get our expected output. Finding out how to remotely collaborate on GitHub was also a learning experience for our group. To add to this, we are all in different time zones so we needed to find ways to make many differing schedules work.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

While we are certainly proud of where we came with this project, we are proud we were able to visualize and execute this idea. Learning how to work with APIs in Python was a challenge for the group as a whole and we were able to overcome this. Most people have taken medication at some point, so it was also a great accomplishment to us that we were able to create something that could help everyone and not just a specific group of people.

What we learned

Aside from learning new syntax and technical concepts within Python, we were able to learn how to better communicate with one another, especially when it comes to differing time zones and coding skillsets. We also learned how to plan and execute a full coding project within a very short deadline. This, in turn, has improved our planning and quick thinking skills.

What's next for Cura

There's several future improvements we could see for Cura. For one, Cura could have a mobile app/website. This would allow people to access Cura easier. For user experience within Cura, an improvement would be allowing users to create and edit multiple medication lists. There could also be code to allow Cura to be more elegant and efficient. Cura strives to be easy to understand and user friendly, and changes like this could make the experience even more so.