Inspiration
We are aware that as Canada's population increase, the health care system in Canada has not grown in proportion to this rising population. This in turn has put a lot of stress on our already compromised health facilities by producing longer wait times and a deficit of number of facilities required to support demand. As such, we build Heart AtTech. Heart AtTech aims to reduce load on the healthcare systems by connecting those requiring CPR/AED with certified individuals close to the caller. Inspired by StanGlobal created in the Netherlands, Heart AtTech aims to reduce load on the healthcare system and get citizens the care they need more effectively.
What it does
Heart AtTech is an application extension that, as a first step, allows CPR/AED certified individuals to sign up as voluntary first responders to emergency situations around their location. Once individuals sign up, their CPR/AED certification is verified against the organization that provided it, and they are provided with a first aid responder badge. It works as a 911 response alert, and is an add-on to the emergency response system already in place. The 911 call staff asks the caller to accept a location request to be sent to a CPR-certified volunteer. Once the caller accepts the request, volunteers within a certain radius of the caller are sent a notification alert to respond to the 911 call, which they choose to accept. If accepted, they are sent the location of the caller and the AEDs around. This reduces the average response time to CPR-related emergencies, reducing the need of medical facilities that may not be readily available at the time.
How we built it
The designing was done using Figma, with which we created the final look of the Heart AtTech mobile app. The webapp was built using React.js, with aesthetics built with HTML and CSS. We used Firebase for building our database that stores the 911 calls with relevant location and responder information.
Challenges we ran into
We wanted to build a webapp for our project and were planning on using React Native to achieve that as some of us had prior experience using it. Unfortunately, we were unable to use it to build our project and hence had to make the decision of building a webapp in its place, using Reactjs. Once that decision was made, we had to build a database to store the relevant 911 calls, with the caller's location and volunteer responders' information. We decided to use Firebase for this. Through this process, we ran into trouble connecting Reactjs to Firebase. Thankfully, we were able to achieve this at the end. Another thing we wanted to add to our project was showing the volunteer responders' the location of AEDs close by that they could use to conduct CPR. The databases that we found with the locations of AEDs were not in easily readable format and we could not figure out to work around it, so we could integrate this functionality in our submission, but is something we look forward to implementing later on.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
After those initials hiccups of not being able to use React Native as originally planned for our mobile app, we are happy with our final project and the decision of switching to building a webapp for the hackathon. Being able to connect Reactjs to Firebase took us an entire night and after asking countless people for help, watching and reading tutorials, we are very proud to be able to showcase our work.
What we learned
We learned to use Reactjs and Firebase to deliver our project. Aside from that, we learned more about APIs are we attempted to use the Google Maps API to show volunteer responders the directions to the 911 caller, even though we could not implement this within the timeframe. We also learned about community and asking for help when stuck. We are grateful for the help we received from the mentors and other hackers present to finish our project.
What's next for Heart AtTech
With Heart AtTech, we hope to increase partnerships with businesses that have made considerable efforts and achieved an impact towards health care in Canada such as TELUS and Phillips. We would like to create further modifications that will allow professionals and everyday citizens to interact and work together to improve Canada's healthcare system, benefitting many.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.