MemoryLane

MemoryLane: Mind active and hearts connected
The Dashboard
The Memory Card
Friends and Chat Page

Inspiration

In many developed countries across the world, the population is rapidly aging. This poses a variety of issues to senior citizens, including social isolation, an overburdened healthcare system unable to meet their needs, and the widespread effects of neurodegenerative conditions. We aimed to build a solution which would address all three of these issues in a way which is easily accessible and empowering to senior citizens.

What it does

MemoryLane allows senior citizens to relive and share their cherished memories. The web application combines three main functionalities, which include a journaling and recall feature for important memories, an AI-powered match and chat system for users to discuss their experiences which are shared with other users, and an analytics dashboard which can be used by healthcare professionals to track key indicators of neurodegenerative conditions. Overall, MemoryLane allows users to not only keep their memories fresh but also weave a tapestry of connections with others with similar life experiences.

How we built it

In order to develop a clean and responsive front-end and versatile back-end, we used Reflex.dev to develop entirely in Python. We also used the InterSystems IRIS database to easily perform vector search as well as other database operations to support the backend functionalities required by MemoryLane. Additionally, we made use of the Together.AI inference API to generate embeddings to match users based on shared experiences, perform sentiment analysis to find trends within memory recall data, and to create sample data to test our web app with. Finally, we used Google Cloud to implement speech-to-text functionality to increase ease of access to our platform for senior citizens. The majority of our app was built with Python, with a little JavaScript.

Challenges we ran into

As 2 of our team members had never done full-stack dev before and one was attending his first hackathon, learning the nuances of new frameworks was initially a challenge, especially getting our environments set up. We’re incredibly grateful to the supportive mentors and sponsors for helping us get unstuck when we ran into issues, which indubitably helped us build our final product.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re very proud of our clean, intuitive UI which aims to make the product as accessible as possible to our target audience, senior citizens. Additionally, we believe that MemoryLane is a truly unique product which fills a niche which hasn’t been focused on before social media for the elderly, especially in combination with its potential benefits of improving the healthcare industry by aggregating data about the elderly. Also, half of our team was able to go from near-zero web dev knowledge to familiarity with important tools and techniques, which we thought was very representative of the spirit of hackathons – coming together to meet new people and learn new things in a fast-paced creative environment.

What we learned

Our journey with MemoryLane has been an enlightening dive into several new technologies. We harnessed the power of Reflex.dev for frontend and full stack development, explored the nuances in our data with InterSystems IRIS’s vector search on text embeddings from TogetherAI, and learned how to bring text to life with Google Cloud. Together AI has also become our ally in understanding our users' needs and narratives with natural language processing.

What's next for MemoryLane

Looking to the horizon, we are definitely looking into expanding MemoryLane’s reach. Our roadmap includes scaling our solution and refining our data model to improve performance, and looking into business models which are sustainable and align with our mission. We envision forming partnerships with healthcare providers, memory care centers, and senior living communities. Integrating IoT could also redefine ease of use for seniors. Keeping innovation in mind, we'll dive deeper into Reflex's capabilities and explore bespoke AI models with Together AI. We aim to improve the technical aspects of our platform as well, including venturing into voice tone analysis to add another layer of emotional intelligence to our app. We believe that MemoryLane is not just a walk in the past – it's a stride into the future of senior healthcare.