Medlink

Turning wearable data into continuous care, connecting patients and doctors anywhere with smarter, borderless healthcare.

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MedLink: Bridging Patients, Doctors, and Data

🌱 Inspiration

The idea for MedLink came from my personal experience growing up in Nepal. Many villages there have Wi-Fi but no doctors, since many physicians move to cities or abroad. People can Google their symptoms — but they can’t consult a real doctor without traveling hours or even days.

I also noticed another issue in everyday healthcare: when you visit a doctor, they only see your vitals in that single moment. If I report dizziness, my heart rate might look normal at that instant — but the spikes from yesterday or irregularities over the week are invisible. This lack of continuous data often leads to incomplete diagnoses.

MedLink was inspired by both problems:

  • Making remote care accessible in places with internet but no doctors.
  • Giving doctors the full health story instead of one-time snapshots.

📚 What I Learned

Working on MedLink taught me how to combine software, data, and healthcare knowledge:

  • Ingesting wearable data into a backend database.
  • Designing a PostgreSQL schema for vitals, sleep, appointments, and alerts.
  • Building a React + Node.js dashboard for patients and doctors.
  • Using Gemini AI to generate clinical summaries from raw health data.

I also learned how crucial continuous monitoring is:

🛠️ How I Built It

  • Frontend: React (Vite, React Router DOM, Recharts for visualization, Lottie for animations).
  • Backend: Node.js with Express, JWT authentication, bcrypt, and PostgreSQL with pg.
  • Database: Tables for users, patients, doctors, real-time and aggregated metrics, sleep, appointments, alerts, and messages.
  • Integration: Apple Watch → Apple Health API → ingestion pipeline → PostgreSQL → MedLink dashboard.
  • AI Assistant: Powered by Gemini, generating clinical summaries from vitals + patient symptoms.
  • Real-Time Features: WebSocket for live alerts and doctor-patient chat.

⚡ Challenges I Faced

  • Data Standardization: Different metrics (heart rate, respiratory rate, sleep, etc.) had different sampling rates.
  • Visualization: Making charts clear for patients yet useful for doctors.
  • AI Summaries: Training Gemini to filter signal from noise without overwhelming doctors.
  • Remote Testing: Simulating use cases from Nepal while building in the US — ensuring it works even with low bandwidth.
  • Time Constraints: Balancing backend, frontend, and AI features under hackathon deadlines.

🚀 Conclusion

MedLink transforms wearable data into continuous healthcare connections.

  • For patients: better understanding of their own health.
  • For doctors: continuous trends, not just one snapshot.
  • For the world: borderless healthcare — because with Wi-Fi, you have a doctor and your health history right in your pocket.

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