MedFlow

Inspiration

People go to the emergency room in urgent situations, often in shock or fear. It is no surprise that patients get extremely frustrated when they face hours of waiting without proper information about delays, their status, or even their triage level. As a team of four engineers, we were drawn to the idea of creating a project used in the medical system with stem background that would be impactful and practical in the real world. We wanted to contribute to making one of the most important parts of our lives -- healthcare -- more satisfying on both the medical staff and patients' sides.

What it does

Our website 'MedFlow' shines its light when the patients are triaged and moved to the waiting room, where often patients are required to wait long dreadful hours. MedFlow is here to improve the patient's experience in the emergency department waiting room allowing a better satisfaction during their visit.

MedFlow uses databases from the Emergency Department to create a temporary status browser for each patient using their hospital card number, ER ticket number, and cellphone number. Each patient can track their estimated waiting time, triage level, and other real-time information on a simple and clear presentation at any point of the wait. They can also share the status browser with trusted ones, allowing family members and guardians to track their situation even if they are not physically at the ER. MedFlow also has an Appointment Goals and Symptom Tracker section, where patients can write down the purpose of their visit and the progression of their injuries. This helps to mitigate one of the issues of which patients often feel unsatisfied after their appointment due to forgetfulness after long hours of wait or appointments being rushed. These features allow them to give a sense of control and being heard. The last key feature of MedFlow is the translation that helps the language barrier, allowing patients to accurately describe their symptoms to the physician and for the physician to give the relevant care.

How we built it

Frontend

For frontend, we started by discussing the essential components for each page; login, status, and tracker. We built the UI design using Figma. Then, we used Anima plugin to export the Figma layers as React(JavaScript) and CSS files. Since the translation between Figma layers and the programming languages were not perfect, we modified those files on Visual Studio Codes to manually format and connect each variable to Firebase; the backend.

Backend - Firebase

Challenges we ran into

One of the biggest challenge we had was to come up with ideas within the constraints of not allowing to give medical advice, that does not involve decision-making and ensures patients' confidentiality, limiting many ideas we had. Consequently, many revisions of ideas, discussions and modifications took place throughout the project to come up with the most innovative and novel ideas.

Additionally, a challenge all teams in a hackathon face is creating a working project with a time restriction. A challenge our team faced specifically was debugging, building intricate frontend design, connecting the front end and the back end in such a short time.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

As beginners, we are proud of:

designing a nice user interface and learning how to use Figma.
creating a thoughtful project for the IFEM challenge that we hope is meaningful for the patient and that could be helpful in the healthcare system.
producing a practical and applicable solution in spite of the time restriction.

What we learned

Building a website in 24 hours is hard and very challenging How to use Figma Some of used did frontend and backend for the first time, learning JavaScript for instance.

What's next for MedFlow

Adding entertainment sections mixing soothing music, educational materials, and breathing exercises to help patients stay occupied and less stressed. Another feature would be incorporating a fun online game feature allowing patients to compete and play with other patients in the room. This feature could be more tailored for children, keeping them calm and busy.