Pharmaceutical search engine

Inspiration

We thought that finding the correct medicine or drugs in pharmacies were becoming increasingly more difficult as COVID-19 went on, so we wanted to solve that by making a way to easily find what you need in a timely manner based on user input and feedback. We did this in Windows 98 style to fully fit the retro theme of such an event.

What it does

Our search engine uses a database of medicine and drugs that connects to a website where users can search for what they need or want. It saves a lot of time on going to different stores and seeing if they have what you need in stock. Our search engine gives specific information from user input and feedback like the drug name, location, and the amount of product that there is in the store.

How we built it

We used an online database called Firebase that let us input data into it based on information on our website that we receive from our users. From there, we can access the data and give our users relevant information on what they need or want with a search query and sort through our data with an algorithm based on what the user wants, and return things like location, name, and how much there is in the store.

Challenges we ran into

This was the first time using an online database for any of us. We had to learn firebase from scratch, and there were many concepts that were new to us. For example, we had to learn event-based programming when getting the buttons to trigger functions in the script. The syntax was also a little bit confusing since we were all out of touch with Javascript, HTML, and CSS for a very long time. When we tried to use read and write functions for firebase, we were having difficulty importing the function but then realized that it was all caused by a syntax error.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re proud of successfully making a database that is universally accessible and has a simple to use GUI. This is also our first hackathon and we are proud of the progress we made in our project. Our code is completely functional and is almost readily usable by the general public.

What we learned

We learned a lot about implementing online databases and getting user feedback and information onto our database and successfully processing it with code to then return things that the user needs. We also learned how to properly use the correct syntax of various coding languages like JavaScript, CSS, and HTML.

What's next for Pharmaceutical search engine

What’s next is to deliver it to a larger audience to input and find information in a much wider area and store a lot more information, as well as adding a level of security to who can input what information into the database so that it stays relevant, reliable, and consistent.