Inspiration
We were inspired by a story about a man in India who rode a bicycle around his neighborhood, collecting extra medicine and delivering it to the homeless and other people in need. We thought, "We can make this easier". And that is exactly what we are doing, with Medicine Matchmaker.
What it does
Medicine Matchmaker allows people with extra medicines to find people in need of medicines through our website. It maintains a database of where users are, what medicines they have, and what medicines they need, in order to find the best donor or recipient for a user.
How we built it
We built the front-end of Medicine Matchmaker using Flask and Python, hosted on PythonAnywhere. The actual logic behind the scenes is also written in Python. Using PythonAnywhere, Google Colaboratory and Google Meet to collaborate made working as a team seamless and smooth.
Challenges we ran into
We ran into quite a few roadblocks while we were making this, however, we were able to get over them eventually. Primarily, we initially had a different project idea, however, after a few hours of hacking we realized that our project wouldn't be useful or unique. Thus, we had to pivot, which left us with less time for hacking. Additionally, since one of us wrote the front-end code, and one of us wrote the back-end code, we had some trouble getting them integrated together, but eventually we managed to make it work.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We got a real application(not just Hello World) hosted on the web, for everyone to use, for the first time! This is also the first time we implement a database for our program, which we are also very proud of. Finally, we are very happy that our hack will help people in need all over the world!
What we learned
We learned how to use databases for storing information in our web app. Also, we learned how to use CSS templates to style our website. Finally, we learned how to use Pandas to parse data and gain insights from it.
What's next for Medicine Matchmaker
We are planning on expanding the medicine database, so that more of the most critical medicines can be distributed. We are also planning on making a mobile app which automatically determines the user's location and uses the camera to automatically identify medicines.
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