Inspiration
Our friend Junwei has lived with chronic headaches for years. Every time he visits the doctor, he’s asked simple but critical questions: How often did the headaches happen? How severe were they? Did the medication help? But in that moment, he can’t recall the details. The patterns blur together, and without accurate records, his doctors struggle to make the best treatment decisions. This frustration made us realize how deeply flawed the current tracking process is, and inspired us to build something better.
What it does
SympTrack uses AI to turn quick daily check-ins into clear, doctor-ready reports.
How we built it
We combined conversational UI, mood/body mapping, and AI summarization into a simple mobile app.
Challenges we ran into
At first, we questioned whether the world really needed another migraine app, after all, there are plenty already. But when we tried the leading options ourselves, we found common problems: they were time-consuming, emotionally draining, and often designed around compliance rather than compassion. That gap convinced us there was room to reimagine the experience.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We don’t have a product built yet, but we’re proud of crystallizing a problem that millions face and validating it with evidence and real-world trials of existing tools. Our accomplishment is in framing a simpler, more empathetic approach that clinicians could actually use.
What we learned
We learned that the challenge in migraine tracking isn’t just technical, but deeply human. When we tested popular apps, we saw how quickly users abandoned them, often after just a few days, because they felt like chores rather than support tools. Research confirms that adherence to tracking drops sharply over time, with most apps losing over 70% of users within days. This showed us that any solution must focus less on rigid compliance and more on creating an experience people can actually sustain, light-touch, emotionally sensitive, and clinically useful. That insight reshaped our approach, pushing us to design SympTrack not as another diary, but as a companion that meets patients where they are.
What's next for SympTrack
Our next step is to prototype and validate SympTrack with patients and doctors. But the vision goes beyond migraine: the same problem of symptom recall affects many chronic conditions — from asthma and COPD to depression and IBS. The core concept of turning small, daily check-ins into structured, doctor-ready reports can scale across multiple diseases, building a unified platform for chronic condition tracking that empowers patients and supports providers.
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