PomEEGo

EEG brainwave monitoring to prevent physician burnout.

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PomEEGo

EEG based monitoring to prevent physician burnout, creating a safer future for everyone.

Inspiration

Medical errors are a critical issue that affects patient safety and healthcare outcomes. Physician burnout is one of the greatest causes of medical error today. We were inspired by the idea of leveraging technology to reduce human error in high-stakes environments like hospitals. By monitoring doctors' focus levels in real-time, we aim to prevent mistakes caused by fatigue or lack of concentration, ultimately improving patient care and saving lives.

What it does

PomEEGo is a patient safety tool designed to combat practitioner fatigue. It uses an EEG device worn on the doctor's forehead to monitor their focus levels in real-time. When focus levels drop below a certain threshold, the system sends a push notification to the doctor's cellular device or smartwatch to alert them of impending fatigue. Data is logged to a web app for hospital chiefs to access and view all doctors' historical data. Physicians with high fatigue levels can be monitored and encouraged to take breaks, with mechanism to continue active patient care through requesting other physicians to take over. The app can monitor recovery in real-time and suggest actions to improve recovery speed.

Features:

  • Real-time EEG monitoring and fatigue notification
  • Pomodoro-style timer to coordinate work and breaks
  • Doctors can request backup when they take breaks due to fatigue. Doctors in the same department can be assigned to open requests.
  • Control panel for department chiefs to browse and analyze all data
  • Statistical analysis across hospital departments regarding working duration

How we built it

  • We used the Neurosky Mindwave EEG headset to capture brainwave data, focusing on metrics such as attention and focus levels.
  • The backend was constructed using Java EE and MongoDB
  • The mobile app was produced using Flutter for cross-platform opportunities in the future. We tested it on an Android smartphone. The web-based control panel was built using jQuery and Bootstrap and was published to a GoDaddy Domain.
  • Push notifications were implemented using Flutter.
  • We connected the EEG device to the mobile app via Bluetooth and used SDKs to ensure seamless communication between the hardware and software components.

Challenges we ran into

  • It was our first time utilizing Flutter to develop a mobile application (and our first time developing a mobile application of any sort!)
  • We ran into LOTS of dependency resolution issues! The EEG SDKs required older build systems while other Flutter libraries required newer ones. Eventually, we were able to work them all out!
  • We worked out how to run MongoDB locally due to the firewall on the hackathon network, which took a lot of time
  • There were a lot of connection issues with the EEG headset that were difficult to debug
  • The EEG data was quite noisy and we needed to work out an algorithm that reduces false positives
  • We wrote code to generate placeholder data (because we can't run the device tens of times, each for a few hours, to simulate the hospital environment)

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Successfully integrating hardware (EEG device) with software (backend, web frontend, and app frontend) to create a functional prototype.
  • Building a real-time notification system that alerts doctors when their focus levels drop.
  • Creating a user-friendly dashboard that provides actionable insights for hospital administrators.
  • Demonstrating the potential of our system to improve patient safety and reduce medical errors.

What we learned

  • Use of Flutter to create cross-platform mobile applications with hardware integration
  • Concepts behind electroencephalography analysis
  • Setting up the architecture of a large application with numerous components

What's next for PomEEGo

  • Develop a more ergonomic headset (headband-style)
  • Continue to improve EEG algorithm
  • Improve authentication system integrations with enterprise architecture
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