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PTO Care Mobile App
Inspiration
One of our group mates has been to the emergency room over 15 times and noticed how poorly patients are treated/handled after they receive treatment in the ER. A conversation he had with his professor where he was told that post-treatment care in the ER is a huge problem in Ontario inspired us to create the PTO Care (“Post-Treatment Ontario” Care) platform. His Professor explained the story of one particularly horrible case where a man with no family/immediate contact was waiting for over 26 hours in the ER waiting room after his treatment, because nobody accurately informed him of when the next accessible transportation vehicle was arriving to take him home.
What it does
The app is designed to ease all the burden after coming out of the ER, because it is a notoriously hectic and anxious place. As long as they have a valid Ontario health card and mobile phone, one can find info about almost anything that could be on their mind. For example: transportation services, helplines, guidelines for what foods to eat after specific procedures (ex: chest pain), and much more can all be found in a few seconds with a few taps.
How we built it
We built the front-end of the app using the design software “Figma” because it provides accurate dimensions for mobile phone resolutions (ex: iPhone) and it’s interface is relatively easy to use.
The back-end is a web application and was built entirely using the Python programming language. Tkinter GUI and the PyCharm IDE were used in particular. We used python because that is the language all of us were most comfortable with and have experience using.
Challenges we ran into
Our overarching issue was consistently our lack of experience with coding under this time constraint and unfamiliarity with Hackathons.
Specific challenges included switching in between menus (getting 1 option to bring about many more in the next stage) layering issues, and it being the first time one of our colleagues used Figma. We worked through these challenges by simply by diagramming on paper what the issue could be so we could understand the issue before using trial and error, and by collaborating.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Given us being complete beginners, we are proud that we built a concrete project that actually works even with our lack of experience. Above all else, we’re very proud that we’ve created something that can begin helping people immediately (if implemented in reality). A project meant for social good is most desirable to us.
What we learned
We learned that there’s so much we don’t know in the world of programming and that planning thoroughly before beginning is extremely important. We reflected and found that we often found ourselves re-pivoting or narrowing our focus, which led to more problems. This could have been solved by having a clear plan in the beginning with a concrete mission statement. What we’ll take away is that for us to bring to reality our great ideas, we need to develop our programming skills much further.
What's next for PTO Care
We want to improve the UI/UX design of the app much further because that was one of the most difficult aspects of the project for us; improving the aesthetic is an urgent goal.
We also want to implement a google map API to improve the functionality of the “Transportation” help section because it will provide us our first experience with APIs.
We believe this app is tangible, and can help Ontarians immediately so we will continue to work on it as much as we can.
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