VaxApp

VaxApp is a SaaS application that aids with the distribution of Covid-19 vaccines at pop-up clinics. It benefits individuals who wish to receive their vaccine and organizations hosting the clinics.

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Inspiration:

People having to stand in long line ups outside of Covid-19 pop-up vaccine clinics, without being certain that they would receive the vaccine during their visit

  • Having large crowds of people outside these clinics also poses a risk to the spread of covid-19

What it does:

For people looking to get a vaccine:

  • Gives the opportunity for people to register to receive notifications from the app when pop-up clinics have opened in their area
  • Users can also use the map feature (uses the Google Maps API) to find pop-up vaccine clinics in their local area and register to receive a dose at clinics registered in the app

For organizations hosting pop-up clinics:

  • Register their clinic in the app (By filling in the required information such as location, hours of operation, eligibility criteria..etc) and get app users to register to receive a dose of the vaccine from the clinic

For organizations hosting pop-up clinics:

  • Register their clinic in the app (By filling in the required information such as location, hours of operation, eligibility criteria..etc) and get app users to register to receive a dose of the vaccine from the clinic

How we built it:

  • Using Java in Android Studio
  • The Google Maps API was implemented by importing the API package for Android Studio (with reference to the Documentation on Google Maps SDK for Android)

Challenges we ran into:

  • Android Studio was taking more time than we anticipated to build and run our code (we ran into 1-2 hour periods of repetitively solving build errors and waiting for our code to run in the emulator tool)
  • API implementation created unforeseen conflicts between the API libraries and the current code that was implemented
  • The issue above also compounded when our team tried to merge individual parts of the code together and there were many configuration conflicts in Android Studio
  • Achieving a fully functional Google Maps feature, that can especially take any postal code and convert it to longitude and latitude to display on correctly on the map
  • Difficulty implementing the Google Cloud Translation API as its implementation started to cause dependency conflicts with the project configuration in Android Studio

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • For two of our team members, this is their first hackathon project
  • Developing a mobile app in Android Studio where only half of the team was familiar with using it
  • Learning more about how to implement Google Maps API and Google Cloud Translation API into an Android Studio project
  • Working on a project that helps solve a problem we see in the current state of the Covid-19 pandemic

What we learned:

  • How to use Android Studio to create a mobile app
  • How to implement a Google Maps API in an Android Studio project
  • An understanding of how to implement Google’s Cloud Translation API in an Android Studio Project

What's next for VaxApp:

  • Expanding to areas outside of Ontario (other provinces/areas in Canada)
  • Catering our application to iOS platforms (with potentially updating to the React Native platform)
  • Creating a menu in the app with an news page for users to keep up with pop-up clinics opening (could be implemented using the Twitter API)
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