Inspiration
We came in not entirely sure what we were doing; most of us only had a year or less of coding experience. We wanted to do something new and innovative, but were not able to create a complicated application. All of us had recently completed the CPR training in PE and 2 of us were boy scouts, so we decided to create an app to help the public with first aid. This app would allow users to treat victims in life threatening situations, even if they had no prior knowledge on the topic.
What it does
Emergency Care is an Android app for helping people who are present at the scene of an emergency but don’t have enough medical experience to help. If the user does not know what the problem is and how to treat the victim, then the app leads them through a small questionnaire to correctly assess the situation. It then tells them the corresponding directions for the given situation, including burns, lacerations, and most other severe injuries. If the user knows what is specifically wrong, then they can go directly to the treatment page.
How we built it
We created Emergency Care through Android Studio. None of us had much experience in app development but over the last day we learned how to create an interactive, and useful mobile app. This app goes between several screens based on differing conditions, leading you to the treatment necessary for the emergency. The app’s simple design allows users to find the treatment needed in the quickest way. Through asking the necessary questions we provide people inept in emergency care the tools needed to save a life.
Challenges we ran into
Over the long coding session, we ran into several problems hardware wise and coding wise. At the start, we didn’t have power for about an hour so we couldn’t work very efficiently. The internet connection was also extremely poor for us so we often experienced periods without progress. We overcame these “dead zones” by talking over what we’ve done and what we needed to do. These periods ended up helping us get organized and plan our app. We also had little experience in app development so we couldn’t do anything fancy. We wanted to make a program that would be useful so we ended up doing a lot of research into android app development. Our testing was also problematic because initially we did not have a mini USB cable that could upload our application.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Despite our setbacks we still managed to create an app that we think is extremely useful. We learned a lot about apps and the development process. We hope to use this experience in the future to create better apps quickly and efficiently. We are happy with how the app turned out and the fact that people could easily use it in emergency care to save lives.
What we learned
Through creating this app we developed our Java skills, as well as our knowledge of Android app development. We learned what it means to work together and that nothing will go exactly as planned. It is important that you have a plan for if things go wrong. We each made sure to contribute in some way too because not everyone could do anything. All of us improved our programming skills, and became accustomed to the Android Studio development.
What's next for Emergency Care
Emergency Care is a first step in the advancement of quick, reliable first aid; it connects everyday people to help in emergencies. We originally planned on adding more features that we had to cut due to lack of time or skill. One of the features was a way to take a picture of the victim and have the app quickly assess the scenario. However, none of us knew computer vision and it would have been hard to do too if we did. Another feature we planned on developing was a learning mode to help people respond quickly. Due to time constraints we were unable to implement this learning mode. Overall, we are extremely proud of our product.
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