Inspiration
There are an estimated 25,000 deaths in the European Union in medical cases related to antibiotic resistant bacteria. Medical costs of patients with such related problems fall between $18k ~ $28k per patient. In addition, around 25% of patients that are newly prescribed medication for chronic illnesses do not take their medication fully. This is a huge problem as there are an estimated 125,000 deaths as a result of misuse or forgetting to take prescriptions.
Part of the problem is human error. Misuse, poor communication, ambiguities, and poor understandings of the prescription can lead to negative consequences. Improperly administering antibiotic drugs will be ineffective in maintaining good health for the patient and increase the superbug epidemic.
What it does
Our product, Savescription, keeps track of which patients are taking which prescriptions. With this, patients are notified with a personalized automated message at the times when they should administer their medicine. Patients can choose to be notified through text or by phone call. Patients are also given the full details of their prescription in the beginning to further their knowledge on the importance of taking their medication at a scheduled time.
How we built it
We built a web interface to add and monitor patients. We utilize node.js and Google Firebase in order to connect everything together.
Challenges we ran into
We had difficulty monitoring and sending the reminders at the correct times. We ran into some problems with git.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
It all works.
What we learned
Web development stuff. We learned that choosing to learn React next time would be a much better idea. We chose the traditional jQuery because we were new to web development and weren't really sure of what was going on.
What's next for Safescription
We would like to continue fighting against human error in prescribed medications. We would like to make paths for patients to be more aware of what they are taking, so we would like to improve on the educational aspect. The database could expand with new features, such as making sure that any new prescriptions do not conflict with already-existing ones. This will take some of the human error away.
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