Inspiration
More than inspiration, the problem being addressed by this project is something which always runs in my mind and is something which I've always wanted to help solve. I'm glad to share my idea here.
Problem Statement
Problem 1: Patients who faint or lose consciousness, sometimes doctors can't immediately offer assistance due to lack of knowledge on the patient and their diseases because naturally, an ambulance doesn't take a person to their family doctor, it takes them to the nearest one. Problem 2: Patients fail to communicate their problems and unease properly, often withdrawing crucial information about their symptoms or past diseases. This often happens without the patient's knowledge or sometimes they are just dismissive about it. Dr. House knows that. This leads to incorrect medical decisions in the small scale (cold, stomachaches, etc) and sometimes even in the large scale (allergies to anaesthesia, hereditary heart problems, etc) Problem 3: It is often a hassle to manage all offline medical records clearly and safely.
My Solution
Health Link - This is an app for the medical history, which will be a default application in everyone's device, like our camera app. Features of the app: -> The app will show a default QR code on the lockscreen, much like emergency contact. The QR has an encrypted patient id code which can only be accessed and used by certified doctors using the same app. This patient id immediately fetches medical records and data of the patient with AI summarisation, quickly giving the doctor all possible reasons for the patient's issues even if he's unconscious. -> The app also has a biometric scan (fingerprint) to recognise the patient, in case their phone is not available. -> Health Link connects patients and families, creating a huge family tree. This is extremely useful in the case of identifying hereditary diseases and common ailments in the family. -> Only doctors can look through a patient's profile and only they can add the treatments they prescribe, hence essentially making the app a doctor-to-doctor communication. This also eradicates offline medical records because everything is stored in the database.
How we built it
The prototype essentially is more like a tool to understand the app better. The prototype used Unity for QR generation and scanning to explain the emergency scanning part and Python to elaborate on the biometric scan part.
Challenges we ran into
Getting a proper biometric fingerprint scanning with a laptop was futile, which consumed a lot of time, so had to settle for a simulation of sorts. Making the scanning part and QR generation was very fun.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
The project is somewhat visualisable with our prototype. And it is my sincere hope that an app similar to this does come up in the future officially, maybe even by me, to save a lot more lives better.
What we learned
The learnings for this project is that we should decide properly on when to stop on the prototype and have a clear view on the restraints of working on a project as a student, because after a point in the project, I feel like the rest of the energy I spent on it could have been on refining what I already had instead of trying to put down exactly what I had in mind. But I'm still happy that I got to manifest even a part of what I had visualised.
What's next for Health Link
Next, I plan on pitching this idea more clearly with possibly a better looking prototype, to medical institutions as a pilot project. Getting hands-on data is crucial, I believe, to take this project to greater heights.
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