SymptoSecure

Streamline healthcare with our quick and reliable patient data-sharing platform, enhancing accuracy and patient care.

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Inspiration

According to the National Institutes of Health, black patients are 20% more likely than white patients to experience a patient safety event. Disparity within the American healthcare system has always been adverse, favoring socio-economic and racial status over patient welfare. This manifests in several ways. For example, people of colour are more likely to come with late-stage skin cancer because of clinicians’ lack of experience diagnosing skin conditions in people with darker skin. Another study by UChicago Medicine claims that black people are twice as likely to be described negatively in medical records, deterring patients from seeking out medical help when they need it out of a fear of being viewed negatively. Furthermore, it's important to recognize that not every socio-economic group has access to prestigious hospitals with well-documented medical histories, and insurance policies can vary significantly in coverage. Thus, there is a pressing need to empower patients from minority and marginalized communities, ensuring they have the autonomy to make informed healthcare decisions. That is where SymptoSecure comes in.

What it does

SymptoSecure Plus emerges as a revolutionary medical profiling tool designed to bridge the critical gap between patients and healthcare providers, particularly focusing on addressing healthcare disparities faced by marginalized communities. This robust platform encapsulates the essence of two pioneering hackathon projects, seamlessly merging their capabilities to offer an enhanced, user-friendly, and privacy-centric healthcare experience.

The platform stands out for its staunch commitment to data privacy, aligning with the stringent General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance requirements. All the information provided by the users is securely stored locally in their browser or encrypted within a URL, not on external servers, ensuring a privacy-preserved health profiling environment. This data can be shared securely with healthcare providers via encrypted links, making the pre-consultation process more efficient and informed.

SymptoSecure Plus acts as a digital pre-consultation platform, aiding patients in organizing and presenting their medical history, symptoms, and other pertinent information in a structured manner. It further educates users by providing insightful health awareness resources, fostering a better understanding of their health and promoting proactive healthcare engagement.

Moreover, the platform is designed to empower individuals, especially from minority communities, to take greater autonomy in managing their health and seeking timely medical attention. This is facilitated through a streamlined platform that allows patients to share their symptoms and medical complaints with their healthcare provider in a concise manner, enhancing the overall consultation experience.

The user-friendly interface makes it easy for individuals to input, review, and share their medical information, streamlining the pre-consultation process. Additionally, the future phases of SymptoSecure Plus envision integrating blockchain technology for enhanced data security and developing a mobile application to ensure accessibility even in low-bandwidth areas. Potential partnerships with wearable device manufacturers and IoT providers are also on the horizon, aiming to provide a holistic view of the user’s well-being by collecting real-time health data.

Through its amalgamated features, SymptoSecure Plus aspires to provide a more secure, accurate, and efficient pathway to optimal healthcare experiences. It embodies a significant stride towards modern, privacy-centric, and technologically enhanced healthcare solutions that are inclusive and equitable.

Providing patients with a streamlined platform to share their symptoms with their healthcare provider in a concise and secure manner.

How we built it

For the Machine Learning model: SkLearn's Support Vector Machine for the classifier, Streamlit to deploy the model, Google Cloud for storing it. The dataset comprised more than 1000 moles, encompassing both benign and malignant cases, collected by the International Skin Imaging Collaboration.

The Vue app was built using Nuxt, Tailwind CSS, TypeScript, and JavaScript.

Challenges we ran into

Integrating the machine learning model with the Vue app was challenging since the ML model was deployed on Streamlit. We had to use Google Cloud to store the model since it was too large to directly be implemented in Google Cloud, however, because of network security issues, Streamlit was only able to deploy the model locally and not over the cloud.

Sharing patient data is a tricky business. Coming up with a platform that is HEPA-compliant was challenging.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of implementing a platform that doesn't use any 3rd party data storage services and is GDRP/HEPA compliant in relation to user data.

What we learned

This is my first time working on a healthcare project, but it's a space I have been wanting to explore for a while, especially in relation to empowering people from marginalized communities. I haven't used Machine Learning classifiers in this setting before so it was exciting to work with novel data and fix the parameters of my model to improve its accuracy.

What's next for SymptoSecure ✨

We like to think of SymptoSecure's future in two phases...

Phase 1: Security and accessibility

  1. Implementing new models to detect other types of commonly occurring cancer such as breast cancer. The next immediate step would be to integrate these models into our web app.
  2. To enhance data security and integrity, SymptoSecure may explore the integration of blockchain technology. Blockchain can provide an immutable and transparent ledger for storing and transmitting health data, reducing the risk of unauthorized access and tampering. This would further boost patient confidence in the platform's data handling.

*Phase 2: Going mobile phone 📱 *

  1. To cater to users with limited internet connectivity, a mobile application version of SymptoSecure will be developed. This app will enable users to access their health records, schedule appointments, and transmit data even in low-bandwidth areas, ensuring accessibility to a wider demographic.
  2. SymptoSecure may explore partnerships with wearable device manufacturers and IoT providers. By connecting with wearable devices and sensors, the platform can collect real-time health data, such as heart rate, blood pressure, and activity levels. Users can have this data automatically synced with their health records, providing a holistic view of their well-being.

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