Health-Buddy

A friend to help you stay on top of your health habits

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Inspiration

As we age, small things like remembering appointments or taking medicine on time can become harder. But every senior deserves to feel supported, not stressed.This idea is simple: a reliable helper that gently reminds them of doctor visits, organizes their schedule, and gives clear advice when they need it. No confusing buttons, no frustration just a calm, caring presence that keeps them on track.

We've all experienced the hassle of having a medical issue and searching through countless articles trying to find the one that may solve the problem for you. Our goal for Health Buddy is to create a friend that can always be by your side and knows you well enough to know what's wrong and right for you. Health Buddy would maintain track of your schedules for workouts and also give you encouraging advice to help you carry through your own journey.

It’s not just about technology it’s about giving them one less thing to worry about. So they can focus on what really matters: enjoying life with confidence and dignity.

What it does

  1. Smart Scheduling: It doesn’t just say "Cardiologist at 2 PM." Instead: "Dr. Lee is expecting you tomorrow after lunch let’s plan to leave at 1:15 so you’re not rushed. Would you like me to call a ride now or remind you again in the morning?" It cross-references traffic, weather, and your energy levels (noting if you slept poorly) to adjust timing.

  2. Personalized Prep: For appointments, it proactively helps: "Your lab test requires fasting—should I set a dinner reminder for 7 PM tonight so you’re ready?" or "Don’t forget to bring the knee brace you mentioned last week!"

  3. Respectful Backup: For critical items (like medications), it escalates tactfully: "I noticed your blood pressure pill wasn’t taken yet. Would you like me to call your daughter so she can remind you?"

  4. Gentle Repetition: If confusion arises, it rephrases patiently: "Your granddaughter’s recital is at 4 PM Sunday at the community center. I can replay her last practice video if you’d like to get excited!"

Key Difference: It contextualizes reminders linking them to routines ("After your morning tea, let’s take your pills") or emotions ("You seemed happy after last month’s book club shall I save you a seat for tomorrow?"). This feels less like nagging and more like a friend keeping you on track.

How we built it

The application was built using Android studio and Kotlin. It was done in Android and not Apple because Apple has much stricter guidelines and red tape around developing applications. The Google Gemini API was used to process text, turn speech to text, and generate the Health Buddy's text.

Challenges we ran into

The Android Emulator Struggle: Being our first time working with Android Studio’s emulator, we faced: Performance Issues: The emulator was sluggish, often freezing or crashing, especially when testing memory-intensive features like voice recording.Configuration Headaches: Setting up the correct device profile (API level, screen size, RAM allocation) took trial and error. What worked on one virtual device failed on another.Unpredictable Behaviour: Sometimes the app would run perfectly in the emulator but behave differently on a physical phone, forcing us to be limited on how many people were able to perform tests.

With no prior Kotlin experience, we had to: Decipher Syntax on the Fly: Many of the features of Kotlin were alien and new to us all. it was difficult for us to decipher them as well as implement them up to a point where they did what we needed them to.Bridge the Gap Between Theory and Practice: Tutorials made Kotlin look simple, but real-world problems (such as making notifications pop up or requesting permissions from the system) required deep dives.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Getting an app that was functional and could work on an android device was a huge accomplishment, also getting our AI to talk with a voice was also quite satisfying

What we learned

We learned how to use and navigate Android studio. While using Kotlin for the first time was a challenge for us all, we managed to pull through and deliver a complete project. This project also taught us how to integrate API keys into our projects as well as making use of other AI tools such as speech-to-text. Seeing as this was the first hackathon for all of us, working in a team in such a high pressure environment was new to us and taught us the difficulty of working under stress.

What's next for Health-Buddy

For the future, Health-buddy could also be able to recommend doctors visits for certain issues a user may have. Be it dietary or something more serious. After having been around a user for a long time, it would develop a profile for where the user's health excels and where it would need work. In this way, Health Buddy could be closer and more helpful as a friend.

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