Inspiration
About 3 weeks ago, I was a victim of a nearly fatal car crash. First responders rushed to the scene of the accident, and hurried me to the hospital. About to plug me into the IV, a medic opened my wallet and saw my medical card. It warned them of a condition I had which required special treatment in scenarios like this. The team was able to take proper action, and saved my life. It was only for this card, that I am still here today. Without it, both me and this project would not exist.
What it does
MediChain aims to create a universal patient file system. By making patient data anonymous, yet available to all, with access to an individuals public key, the patients entire treatment history can be reviewed instantly, at nearly no cost. This increases quality and speed of care for a variety of reasons. As hospitals no longer need to share patient data with each other since there is only one file for each individual, the time it takes for entities to communicate with each other, locate files, get permission, and transmit them is eliminated. As in the inspiration, specific medical conditions can now be realized which would avoid otherwise unknown complications. Unrealized treatment conflicts (such as two medicines not working together, or allergies) can now be avoided as all, even seemingly unrelated, patient data is held in a single place.
How we built it
We built a custom blockchain application which runs in a node environment hosted on an express server. This node environment handles user creation, hashing, transactions, and all other blockchain necessities. The front end was built using next.js and API requests were made to interact with the blockchain.
Challenges we ran into
Utilizing an express server to communicate API requests proved difficult given how we initially created our blockchain application. We were not able to fully integrate the blockchain functionality with the next.js frontend due to the time crunch.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
The design of our front end is very clean, and the idea of the project holds the potential for profound impact.
What we learned
We've never worked with the blockchain before. As this was our first time working with it, we learned a lot about what it was, how it worked, and how to implement it. I've never worked with a node environment before, so this was a new experience for me. Connecting our node environment to an express server and utilizing API calls was also new for us. This project taught me a lot about javascript as well.
What's next for MediChain
We're going to fully implement the blockchain functionality inside of our next.js front end, as well as adding various features such as more options for uploading data and smart contracts for increased communication between hospital and patient. We'd like to work with Apple's Health App to showcase an individuals medical file by scraping data from an individuals public key.