Inspiration
We can all relate to hospital wait times to be extremely long and with influenza viruses like the Coronavirus constantly being transferred to humans, we knew that many individuals would need access to medical care. In many cases, small towns and cities do not have the resources to provide care to their whole family, in which case these hospitals are either overwhelmed or patients are sent to other hospitals. This transfer process takes time and resources that the community may not have. This inspired us to create an online system that would identify hospitals in the area that have the resources to provide a patient with the care they require.
What it does
Find-a-Hospital takes into consideration the inputted address and calculates travel time to various hospitals in the area and their respective wait times. It adds this information and identifies the hospital that will provide medical care first.
How we built it
We created a Class Attribute that had various members such as hospital name, hospital address, travel time, and wait time. The system then took this information and added the travel time and wait time to find the total time it would take the patient to receive care. It then outputted the hospital information that has the best service time.
Challenges we ran into
At first, we coded in C++, however we also wanted to create a webpage for this application. We found that it was very difficult to convert the code from C++ to a webpage language so we decided to rewrite the code in HTML5 so that our application could be presented in the form of a webpage.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Our system seems to function relatively well. There are various customization methods and if we can connect our application with Google Maps to obtain accurate traffic and distance information, this system would be almost ready for production. We would also need to provide hospital staff with the ability to change the wait times at regular intervals.
What we learned
We learned that it is important to communicate and split up the work. That way everybody completes their task and nobody feels that they contributed more than anyone else.
What's next for Find-a-Hospital
We need to connect with Google Maps to obtain live data and create a centralized database so that hospital staff can input/update the wait times. Obviously, continuous changes for aesthetic and back-end functionality will be necessary. We can add features such as the Medical Care that you would require when you arrive at the hospital. This would provide the hospital staff with more information regarding the services they will be expected to provide.
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