Pill Pal

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  "Pills on time. Every time."

Inspiration

With all of us being first-generation college students, it is no surprise that our families are a big part of our lives. And families, of course, include our beloved grandparents. ❤️

According to Southern Illinois University Edwardsville School of Pharmacy, “Almost 90% of older adults regularly take at least 1 prescription drug, almost 80% regularly take at least 2 prescription drugs, and 36% regularly take at least 5 different prescription drugs”. 💊

Identifying this compelling fact, we were inspired to create a tool for the elderly that would simplify the technical abilities needed for its use as much as possible. After all, what is the point of creating technology that is intended to innovate the world if you leave the innovators of the past behind? 🤔

What it does

At its rawest form, Pill Pal 💊 works by allowing a senior citizen 👵 to take charge of their daily medication notifications. But, unlike other reminder/habit-tracker platforms, Pill Pal adds an extra level of ease for our elderly users by allowing a verified caregiver (i.e. spouse, children, grandchildren, nurses, etc.) to upload medication information including doses and means of usage (i.e. pill, injection, drink) for their loved ones. Based on the information that the caregiver provides, Pill Pal is able to send banner notifications to the patient with no actions needed from the patient other than inputting their name and phone number. This simple framework removes friction during the process which allows even non-”tech-savvy” patients to be able to use it and track their medication. In other words, Pill Pal’s goal is to make technology more accessible and less esoteric.

How we built it

As this was all our members’ first time engaging in collaborative programming, we aimed for efficiency by using organizational tools including Notion, Google GSuite, and GitHub to sort tasks by priority, divide up work based on interests and experience, and mark tasks In terms of Front End Development, we used SwiftUI to create our beautiful user interface that runs on IOS. Using its simulations and starting with the TreeHacks HackPack, we were able to get quite far with SwiftUI and really enjoyed working with it. For Backend Development, we worked with PostgreSQL to engineer our database where we collect patient data, caregiver data, medication data, and link all of them together. To make REST API calls, we used Flask to pull and push data from our database. 🔨

Challenges we ran into

We would love to say that the 36 hours ran perfectly smoothly, but there was no shortage of challenges throughout our Pill Pal journey. Regardless of any of our interests in Computer Science, we quickly realized that we all had never worked with mobile app development or anything remotely related to healthcare. We also found ourselves getting caught up in the ideation process. To be completely transparent, we spent the first 15 hours of the competition designing and building a completely different platform until Amesha’s dad and Efrain’s roommate both burst our bubble that our project had already existed for years. (They both backed it up with links to websites, too. It was rough.) But, nevertheless, we persisted and vowed to never forget the start of WeGo transportation. 😔☝️ Brainstorming and writing anything and everything down was a very beneficial strategy and allowed us to be accepting of anything with even a hint of a good idea. Thinking about apps and platforms that we enjoy also was a good starting point for a lot of our initial ideas. ⚠️ Fun Fact: BeReal for health really was the premise of Pill Pal. ⚠️

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Honestly, we are really proud that we were able to create a deliverable that we are proud of within 36 hours. Even with it being our first ever hackathon and unfortunately experiencing a 15 hour setback, we were able to pull together a platform that can really make an impact for those that need it most. We see Pill Pal to have a lot of applicable features and truly believe in its ability to change the world through helping a very important part of our population. 🫂

We are also proud that we were able to build relationships with each other not only as teammates or LinkedIn connections, but as friends. Sleeping over in the same dorm, sharing meals, going on walks, dancing to music, and maybe even trying to take a break at a party on the Row 🙈…we were able to bond and are definitely never going to forget this experience.

What we learned

With our whole team being comprised of first-year computer science students who have never before competed in hackathons (#firstyearhackerrepresentation 🙌 ), there was a LOT to learn. Beyond just learning different developer tools like SwiftUI, Flask, Python Programming Language, and PostGreSQL, all four of us learned many things about the ideating, modeling, and execution process. Looking through our super messy notebook, we came up with 23 different ideas dealing with a range of parameters including restaurant crowdedness, Tinder for food, fridge leftovers, and more. (apparently we were hungry 😋 ) However, we also learned a lot about each other. We learned about Denny’s grape pizza at Harvard, Karen’s inability to stay awake past 1 AM, Efrain’s obsession with TAP milkshakes, and Amesha’s collection of strange playlists to keep us awake. 🎵

What's next for Pill Pal

Though we are proud of what we were able to build in the 36 hours timeframe of this competition, there is a lot more in store for Pill Pal. As of right now, our interface is great for streamlining the Caregiver-Patient relationship. But what if the process could start right at the prescription of the medication? By bringing physicians into the Pill Pal framework, we would be able to ensure more accuracy and efficiency. And, it would allow for this technology to be adapted into senior homes and other senior living facilities as well.

Additionally, with Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology expanding into all fields including healthcare, Pill Pal could incorporate image classification algorithms in order to create a Pill Detection Interface trained on vast amounts of pill image datasets with a variety of realistic combinations. Through this, elderly users would be able to take a picture of their pill and ensure that it is the correct medication and the correct dosage. Not only does this minimize the risk of incorrect medication/dosage, it also allows users to take control of their medication a little more which can help greatly when it comes to crowded senior homes or hospitals. 🙏

Built With

• flask
• postgresql
• python
• swift