Mediform: the future of clinical intake
Share crucial health information with the ease of a scan
The design protoypes for Mediform

Inspiration

Imagine you rushed to the clinic in an emergency, only to be told that you must fill out an intake form on paper before anything can be done. On top of that, the form asks you details about your family doctor you do not have on hand, or diseases that your relatives may or may not have had. How frustrating! And, it's an archaic and inefficient process which may lead to your healthcare team receiving incomplete or inaccurate information with which to treat you. We wanted to develop a technological solution to this problem, which allows patients to effortlessly communicate important and frequently-used health information with their healthcare provider. The aim was to eliminate mistakes during clinical intake, reduce inefficiencies in the clinician's workflow, and deliver faster healthcare to those in need.

What it does

Mediform is a platform which allows patient to digitize important and frequently-used health information and share it effortlessly with their healthcare provider. A patient goes through a one-time setup process, when they input their personal health information on the app. Upon completion, they are able to present a QR code to their healthcare provider, which, once scanned, transmits the data to the clinic's EMR. If more information is requested, the clinician can request it directly on the app, which will then be added to patient's profile (their Health Passport) for future use as well.

The patient can carry the QR code on their person, such that all of their crucial information can be retrieved by emergency personnel immediately in the event of an emergency. Additionally, this platform makes the clinic intake process much more accessible for patients with reduced mobility, loss of motor control, or reduced speech, allowing them to create their Health Passport ahead of time, and convey relevant information quickly and accurately to their healthcare team.

How we built it

The platform was built from the ground up to be accessible to a wide and diverse range of users. As such, the design is welcoming, communicative, and easily accessible with large buttons and an unencumbered onboarding process.

The technology used to implement the hack was based on responsive web technologies such as React.js, so that it could be used on a variety of devices. The patient's personal health information is shared to clinicians easily and reliably using a QR code, which is generated and stored on the patient's device. Our backend is built using an Express web server. The database solution utilizes MongoDB. We chose these technologies so that our platform would be flexible to accommodate the wide variety of information required by different healthcare institutions.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The beautiful and welcoming vector illustrations produced by Grace for the app.
Integrating the QR code generation and scanning workflows, to really make the sharing process seamless.
Being able to divide the workload fairly evenly and integrate our individual work together.

What we learned

Dexter learned about web technologies such as React.js and Node, and was able to receive mentorship from knowledgable members of the team.
Grace appreciated the need for a good night's sleep before a hackathon.
Caleb learned how to create dynamic content in React.js.
Ahrar was able to exercise project management skills to help keep the team on track, and learned to integrate the Material UI framework into his React components
We all learned from the decision-making process of reducing the ideas down to an actionable plan for an MVP, to be made in less than 24 hours.

Challenges we ran into

Dexter struggled with understanding React conceptually, and with integrating the different components of the app
Ahrar had a difficult time with deploying our React app, which used a Single Page Application design, to static site hosts such as GitHub pages. Turns out it's not well-supported, after all!

Next Steps

Integrate functionality to scan 2D barcodes on health cards
Integrate with industry standard EMR systems
Implement a way to retain a history of the patient's clinical visits
Ensure the information is kept secure in adherence to Personal Health Information Protection Act
Implement a system where EMS personnel can be granted immediate access to information without security challenge