[55] - HealthDeck

Managing your health during a pandemic might feel like a dead end, but given the right "cards", such as HealthDeck, you can pave the road ahead.

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Inspiration

While navigating COVID-19, being able to get the help you need to keep your health in check can be difficult. For example, diabetes is a disease that requires non-stop management. With HealthDeck, we are able to reduce the stress caused by this monitoring.

What it does

HealthDeck allows the user to monitor several health metrics. In addition, it includes a failsafe for when the user does not respond to certain alerts. Users are able to track multiple health metrics and see graphs to analyze their progress. When a user's health data reaches a danger zone they will be alerted ASAP. If the alert is not resolved in a certain time frame, the app will send a push notification to someone in their emergency contacts.

How we built it

HealthDeck has a React.js frontend web interface along with a Pygame application that can be run on a touchscreen raspberry pi.

Challenges we ran into

There were a number of challenges we had to overcome as a team. Only two of us had the hardware necessary to collect and post sensor data to our real-time database. Therefore, we split the workload up into two parts (hardware/raspberry pi programming/data collection and web app development). The web app developers relied on the data endpoints, so there was latency in development due to this. We ran into some React/JavaScript security issues as well when making requests to our endpoints. We struggled to find a solution to this, so the team moved forward with a proof of concept for the web app. Regarding the hardware, we were ultimately able to develop a working, real-time health monitoring system. We ran into some issues when implementing the SMS emergency notification piece (when health readings are in danger zones), but ultimately got these alerts working via the raspberry pi. Overall, we faced a handful of challenges but were able to overcome most.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of updating the displayed health metrics in real time on the Pygame app. Making the SMS notification piece work was also one of the big accomplishments.

What we learned

Each team member worked on different components of the project. Nick focused on developing the raspberry pi application, so he learned how to use Pygame to program a raspberry pi display. Muntaser worked with sensor data acquisition and developing the database/endpoints, so he fine-tuned his skills in this area. Stella and Cameron worked on the React app and learned some data visualization techniques as well as how to create a menu sidebar. They also explored React’s REST API.

What's next for HealthDeck

The future of HealthDeck would involve fetching the real-time health data and displaying this on our web application. We ran into issues with the security of the endpoint we were using to host the real-time data. We could also make a mobile app to complement the web app.

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