Inspiration
It can be pretty hard to find a vaccine site right now, especially ones close to you if you live in a densely populated area. The idea behind this site is to make finding and signing up for vaccine shots easier.
What it does
Vaccine Finder takes your location and searches through available vaccine sites in your state to find the closest one. It can also notify you when it finds a closer site.
How we built it
I used python to write the back end, which takes your city and state and turns it into coordinates using geopy. It then pulls data from large pharmaceutical companies like CVS to compare your location with the location of open vaccine sites in your area, finding the closest one. I then used django to build the front end.
Challenges we ran into
I've never done web development before this and I used more time to learn how to do so than I'd planned for. As a result, I was not able to fully implement the automatic alert feature.
I was also slightly limited by geopy's relatively basic API since anything more advanced, like Google Maps, costed money. That's why it takes quite a bit of time to find the closest site.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
This is my first time making an entire service from scratch on my own.
What we learned
I learned a good amount about frontend development
What's next for Vaccine Finder
In the future, I will add more vaccine suppliers to the list of locations that Vaccine Finder checks, hopefully allowing for better results. I also plan to finish implementing the automatic alert system.
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