The website
Just say, "Hi"

Inspiration

My wife was hospitalised after being run over by a mini-bus in 2016. As we did not have medical aid, we had to pay for all the expenses out of pocket, as such it was necessary to save money where ever possible. I spent a lot of time walking from one service provider to another to get pricing of things such as lab tests, crutches and scans, with the aim of finding the most affordable options. It is at that time that I thought that a mobile or web-based platform to do this footwork would make a lot of lives easier. Alas, life threw many things at me after that and this idea was quickly put on the back burner. When the COVID pandemic and associated lockdowns came about, the idea was revived, with the added benefit of preventing unnecessary contact/travel whilst seeking affordable medical options.

What it does

There are 2 facets to the chat-based platform. It permits those seeking medical services or drugs to submit a request for quotations from various service providers. They can do this online of via the website or via chat based applications such as FB Messenger and Telegram. They may also search for the contact details of medical services providers in a particular area, which may be necessary in an emergency.

How I built it

The messaging bot is built in PHP, using BotMan as the base framework for than conversational interface. It leverages Quick Replies to allow users to quickly fill out their quotation requests with minimal typing. It also uses One Time Notifications to allow the platform to notify users of new quotation submissions that may occur after 24 hours has lapsed.

Challenges I ran into

One of the primary problems I faced was that BotMan was not up-to-date with regards to its support for Facebook Messenger. As such, I had to write a custom implementation to support the handling of One Time Notification requests. Shared hosting has its limitations, which forced me to change part of the application architecture which sends the user notifications when a quotation is ready.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I managed to write both the website and chat platform whilst on lockdown. I also managed to get it working on Telegram.

What I learned

I learned how to properly use One Time Notifications. I also learnt how to deploy a bot (BotMan framework) on shared hosting.

What's next for Meds

At present, the Facebook bot hasn't been approved because of COVID, so I am patiently waiting for that. I am also trying to get service providers registered on the platform to provide quotations for their respective service areas.