Inspiration
The inspiration behind Internet Hospital was to address the challenges and limitations of traditional healthcare systems.
Did you know that 43% of working-age adults in the US were inadequately insured in 2022? That means that they are either uninsured, had gaps in coverage, or their health insurance did not provide them with affordable access to health care (commonweathfund.org). That's almost half of the American working population that struggles to find affordable and accessible health care!
The increasing demand for accessible and affordable healthcare services, along with the advancements in technology, led to the idea of creating an online platform that connects patients with medical professionals in real-time. The goal of Internet Hospital is to make medical services more accessible and convenient for people, especially in remote and underserved areas. It also seeks to reduce the burden on brick and mortar hospitals, saving time and resources for both patients and healthcare providers. By leveraging technology, Internet Hospital aims to create a better and more efficient healthcare system that prioritizes the well-being and satisfaction of patients.
What it does
Internet Hospital is an online platform that connects patients with medical professionals for virtual consultations from the comfort of their own homes. The platform provides real-time virtual consultations with licensed medical professionals, including doctors, nurses, and specialists, who can diagnose and treat common illnesses and injuries. Patients can also use the platform to schedule appointments, track their health records, receive test results, and receive prescriptions and referrals as needed. The goal of Internet Hospital is to make healthcare more accessible, convenient, and efficient, while providing high-quality medical services to people all over the world. The patients interact with doctors free of charge, and the medical professionals are compensated through ad revenue on the website. This gives the opportunity for different medical care providers, pharmacies, etc to advertise their services as well.
How we built it
The web development team utilized a variety of tools to build the website of the Internet Hospital. First, Figma was used to create mockups of the different web pages to constitute the website. Then, we used the anima extension to explore Figma's HTML and CSS files over to our code editor and made further edits and enhancements. Finally, VS Code's collaboration features as well as Github were used to jointly complete the website portion of the project.
Challenges we ran into
One challenge that I (Hebron) ran into was duplicating the crisp and clean graphics from Figma to a self-written HTML and CSS code. At first, I set out to construct from scratch the Figma representations that my team had created on Visual Studio code. However, I began to think that getting the graphics just the same and as tidy was challenging. That's when I began to explore options of using Figma's mockup to create the webpage. Thankfully, Figma had such a resource. Although the Figma conversion tool: Anima, was not perfect in exploring the HTML files, it made the job a whole lot easier, and we were then able to go in and add what was missing with HTML.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud of our brainstorming session and our ability to fully flesh out the idea and visualize it on Figma. We are proud to create a functioning chatbot, and hope to improve it using Google Cloud, by including a speech to text API.
What we learned
For many members of our team, this was our first hackathon. We learned how to use Figma to create a vibrant mockup and UI design of our ideas for the website. We learned how to use GitHub to store our codes. We also learned how to code a chatbot that recognizes speech patterns from user messages and responds accordingly. We also learned how to use HTML and CSS to code a website based on our mockup design.
What's next for Internet Hospital
Some possible features that could be added in the future include:
1) Integration with wearable devices: The platform could be integrated with wearable devices, such as fitness trackers, to provide a more comprehensive view of a patient's health status and track progress over time.
2) AI-powered diagnosis and treatment: The platform could incorporate AI algorithms to provide more accurate diagnoses and personalized treatment plans for patients.
3) Multi-language support: The platform could support multiple languages to make it accessible to a wider range of patients, especially those in non-English speaking countries.
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