Inspiration
Max suffered a stroke when he was an infant. From that day forward if he's ever in a dangerous accident he will fail any and all field tests for brain trauma, even if the accident isn't the cause. because of this he has been advised to wear a medical alert band for his entire life.
(Max) I stubbornly fall into the majority of individuals that should be wearing one and don't. Upon my acceptance to PennApps and discovering the theme was health, Zac and I spent a few days spitballing ideas for our hack until we stumbled upon the idea. To us it was perfect, it would directly impact our lives and bring open source safety into the world.
What it does
TouchSave stores any medical information the user might deem relevant to an EMT in the event that they are being rescued in case of an accident. This can include current medications, allergies, risks, and so much more. Through use of NFC stickers placed on the user's wallet, phone, or jewelry a paramedic can scan and view what the user has input in order to make safer judgement calls out in the field.
How I built it
TouchSave was built using Python on the Django CMS, and was tested using android devices for their easy to use NFC development side.
Challenges I ran into
Having never been to a hack before, the main challenge we faced was inexperience. the entire mentality was new- "creation for the sake of creation" was just never a thought I'd entertained before this year. Breaking these mindsets was the greatest challenge of the weekend, and I'm so glad I did.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
For every member of the team this was their first Hack. As a collective we're pretty damn proud that TouchSave could go from idea to reality in a matter of hours. This experience has been amazing. We quite literally created a project from nothing in 2 days. That's something to be proud of to me.
What I learned
It's ok not to know what you're doing. It took us almost an entire day to figure out what stack we were using. The lesson from this is that inexperience isn't an excuse for not going out and doing something. We did it. That took guts and despite not having a pristine or beautiful project its a start.
Most importantly I learned I'll be applying to a lot more hackathons in the near future.
What's next for TouchSave
TouchSave will continue to be developed on as a project for our school's yearly project expo, Imagine RIT. It is our hope to see open source safety procedures become the norm one day.
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