HackRef

Inspiration

Medical students already have tonnes of work on their plates: struggling with referencing essays shouldn't be as much of a bother as it is.

What it does

It reads your essay, figures out the underlying topics and then sends you all the related reference papers it can find.

How I built it

I used the Microsoft Text Analysis tools, and obtained the API for Topic Analysis. I integrated this with the PubMed API, so that the reference papers could be accessed.

Challenges I ran into

The Microsoft API only works with a minimum of 100 documents sent at a time, so I had to sit with the sponsors to figure out how to get around this as you would usually only send it one document at a time.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Learning a new language.

What I learned

I learned how to use HTML for the first time so that I could work on the front-end.

What's next for HackRef

It's far from perfect, so I plan on actually finishing HackRef. I want to be able to use it for my own essays.