Know Your Ov

Inspiration

A few years ago, I attended the Space Apps Hack-a-thon as a teacher chaperone for New Century Technology High School students. I was amazed by this incredible opportunity my students, as well as other members in the community, were able to learn and do at this competition. I wanted my students to participate again. I asked the Biotech club students and I offered extra credit to the Bioinformatics/Genomics class if they would participate. The students were just too busy with school work. Since I couldn't find a group of students to mentor, I decided to mentor myself. I have a M.S. in Biology and I new that if I wanted to be competitive in the job market and accomplish my goal of becoming a research scientist, I would have to learn how to code. Even though I rock at team work, I purposely decided to tackle this project alone for two reasons: 1) if I partnered with someone that could code, it wouldn't put the pressure on me to learn it, 2) if I partnered with someone that couldn't code, I would feel bad if I let them down because I have never coded before. As a mom, wife, teacher, soccer coach, academic team coach, I new my time to work on this project would be very little and at random times. This led to the inspiration of the project I created. "Know Your Ov" - the quick and easy online ovarian cancer risk assessment survey. Even the busiest woman can complete this survey with zero stress.

What it does

I created an ovarian cancer risk assessment survey on Google Forms. Through social media, this Google Forms can be shared. Women all over the country can complete this quick survey in less than 2 minutes on their cellphone or computer. Unlike the original Domo challenge patient survey, this survey has no "free-response" questions, thus decreasing the time it takes to filter out random answers like "Hartselle" for ethnicity. "Know Your Ov" survey also includes other risk factors that are specific to just ovarian cancer, thus increasing the accuracy. The google form is automatically converted to a csv file and linked to the Jupyter Notebook. In the Jupyter Notebook, a program has been set up to read the existing data (from the Domo challenge) via a link to a Google Sheet to create a model. The Python algorithm uses this model to predict whether a woman taking the "Know Your Ov" survey is classified as being at risk or not at risk of developing Ovarian Cancer. Since both data sets (Domo data, and Know Your Ov data) are linked to a Google Sheet, researchers across the nation can collaborate on data analysis. The "Know Your Ov" survey is also designed to be taken by women who already have been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Their results can be fed back into the machine learning matrix, thus creating a smarter Mr.Roboto.... or better yet, "Ms.Roboto!"

How we built it

I watched a lot of You Tube Tutorials on Pandas. I asked mentors (such as Matt) for help when I got stuck. I watched the videos posted by Hudson Alpha and Urban Engine on Twitch. I had to Google....a lot. Here is a list of things I had to google and learn about this week (most of which I had never heard of before): Python, Anaconda, Pandas, Jupyter Notebook, Google Colab, Pycharm, API, what is a command window, how do I open a command window, One-hot encoding, GitHub, jsn, numpy, machine learning, nominal and ordinal categorical variables......

Challenges we ran into

Everything. It was a slow process and I struggled, but their is value in the struggle. Every time I clicked on the Run button, I would have anxiety to see if it would spit back and error or not. It was a thrill when I would do something and it actually worked. I didn't give up, but I did run out of time.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Everything. Considering where I started, I am super proud of everything I accomplished. I even signed up to take a class at UAH this summer called Coding in Biology. I want to get better at coding and come back next year to win.

What we learned

Everything. Even making an iMovie on the Ipad was new for me. I had never really used Discord before this event. So even navigating the little rooms or hashtag things were apart of the learning process.

What's next for Know Your Ov

With a little cleaning, "Know Your Ov" could literally be something that Hudson Alpha could launch. Part of the healthcare system (I know Dr. Lamb refers to what we have is "sick care"-which he is correct) is to educate and inform the public of diseases and preventative measures. My grandmother didn't know she had Pancreatic Cancer until it was too late. Using data trends to create models and then incorporate those models into a tool free to access, is the future of healthcare and equitable for all.