MEDstruation

Medication guides are confusing, leaving people unaware of how meds affect their menstrual cycle. MEDstruation pairs clear side-effect info with a cycle tracker to reduce panic and boost understanding

Comment

SheInnovatesProject

Project created by Nandin-Erdene Molomjamts, Lan Nguyen, Shirin Khandare, and Veronika Makowski

Goal

The goal of MEDstruation is to provide user-friendly experience for users to track their menstruation cycle and learn about the potential side effects of their medication in simplified and understandable manner.

Inspiration

Medication guides are often long and complex, leading few people to truly take the time to read and understand how their menstrual cycle may be affected by the medication they take. Because of this, many people become stressed when they face a change in their cycle, seemingly without any explanation. MEDstruation aims to eradicate this anxiety by providing users with their medication's potential menstrual cycle side effects conveniently alongside a cycle tracker. In doing so, we hope to make people more aware of the effects of their medication on their cycle, decreasing panic and increasing knowledge.

What It Does

MEDstruation allows users to log their cycle within a calendar, where they can rate their pain and list the medication they've taken. Alongside the tracking functionality, users may search and add their medications to their profile, where they will be informed of the potential sideeffects the medication may have on their menstrual cycle.

How It Was Built

Built with:

  • MongoDB
  • VSCode

Languages:

  • HTML
  • CSS
  • JavaScript
  • Python

Technology Explanation We chose the above technology for this project in the interest of simplicity. HTML, JavaScript, Python, and CSS provide a simplistic base that is easy to work with on a time-crunch. Additionally, VSCode is a familiar environment for many developers. Finally, MongoDB conveniently stores data in a easy-to-follow format, making it ideal for beginners such as ourselves.

How To Run Locally

This project is not currently deployed.

To view the site locally:

  1. Follow installment instructions for MongoDB

  2. Clone or download this repository

  3. Open the project folder in VS Code

  4. Install the Live Server extension (if not already installed)

  5. Right-click index.html and select “Open with Live Server”

Challenges We Faced

During the course of this Hackathon, we experienced more challenges than we had previously thought possible in a 36 hour time limit. Implementing the database into the rest of the stack caused several issues, as servers stopped, links failed, and code that had previously worked flawlessly gave up entirely. It took quite a bit of debugging to fix this.

Additionally, managing user input without a exclusive database led to issues creating a sign-in and login. We managed to get by utilizing localStorage, but a more refined method is something we hope to implement in the future.

What We Learned

During the course of this hectic 36-hour hackathon, the team has learned several different lessons. Some of us learned HTML, JavaScript, and CSS from the ground up, and others learned how to manipulate data and connect data across backend to frontend. We all learned the difficulty involved in full stack development.

Future Improvements

If possible, we would like to include the following features in Medstruation:

-Period Prediction w/meds and history

Set Up

Setup Instructions for MongoDB

  1. Pull latest changes:

    git pull

  2. Install dependencies:

    npm install
python -m pip install -r requirements.txt

  3. Create a .env file:

Windows:

   Copy-Item .env.example .env

Mac/Linux:

   cp .env.example .env

Then edit .env and add the MongoDB connection string (ask me (Lan) for password. When pasting it in, get rid of the brackets <>). DO NOT share the password publically.

  1. Important: Data is already in MongoDB Atlas - you do NOT need to download or process data files. I've already done that. ^_^

  2. Start the API server:

    python App.py

    Do not worry if you cannot type any commands when running python App.py. The Flask server is just running and taking over the terminal. Simply start a new terminal, so you have two terminals. One to run the server, the other to run git commands.

The API will be available at http://localhost:5000

API Endpoints

  • GET /api/drugs - Get all drugs (374 drugs)
  • GET /api/drug/<drug_name> - Get specific drug info
  • GET /api/search/<effect> - Search by menstrual effect

Example:

http://localhost:5000/api/drug/STELARA
http://localhost:5000/api/search/Dysmenorrhoea

Environment Variables

  • MONGODB_URI: MongoDB Atlas connection string (get from team)
  • DATA_DIR: Path to data folder (default: ./data) - not needed for normal use

For Development

The database already has 374 drugs with menstrual side effects. You only need to run the API server (python App.py) to access the data.

Credits

Team Members

  • Nandin-Erdene Molomjamts
  • Lan Nguyen
  • Shirin Khandare
  • Veronika Makowski

Resources

Share this project:

Updates