Inspiration
Instead of improving the health of a country by connecting sick people with big, unwieldy institutions like the government (we all know how complicated healthcare is), we envisioned a grassroots movement that leverages the charity of people for their community. The idea here is that a little goes a long way (donations can be around $10-20, about what a deductible is equal to)
What it does
Imagine if you were a low-income mother living on food stamps. Why would you bother seeing a doctor about a health issue knowing that you most likely can’t afford it? And imagine if you wanted to donate money for a charitable cause, but don’t know how much of a difference it’s actually making. Connecting these two populations would yield tremendous benefits because it’s a win-win for both sides. Our project provides a viable solution to this problem in 5 simple steps:
- benefactors have the chance to pay-it-forward during their hospital visit by donating money in addition to deductible
- lower-income patients use our app to locate hospitals with pay-it-forward funds and book an appointment
- They show up and provide their SSN to the doctor
- Doctor uses our website to verify that they qualify for free coverage
- Doctor THEN offers appropriate care
How we built it
This project has an app and a website component. The app was built in Java using Android Studio, while the website was built using Bootstrap (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) and PHP. We used Firebase for backend data management.
Challenges we ran into
We re-hashed our idea many times because there was either an existing system identical to it, it had loopholes, or it was hard to implement safely and securely. We also had to re-do several components because we either figured out a better way or encountered issues we hadn't considered.
What's next for Cordial
- Filter hospitals based on type of aid they offer, since some hospitals may not have or resources for specific health issues.
- Integrate the TensorFlow textsum library to summarize medical documents for the less-educated or non-native English speakers
- Carpool option if an incoming patient sees that a low-income patient in their area has booked an appointment around the same time or soon after
- Kiosks near subway/metro stops for booking appointments for those without access to computers
- General Location Donation (GLD): in the app select a zip code to donate to, then an algorithm would dole out the donation to the hospitals in that zip code that need it.
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