Inspiration
Once our team had seen the sheer amount of hospitalizations and deaths caused by medication management across the US, we figured there had to be some way we could encourage people to improve their medication management. We didn’t know what had been making this issue so prevalent, so we made a platform that integrated various solutions with the hopes that we could appeal to as many people struggling with medication adherence as possible. Some people may struggle to tell their provider the issues they’re having with their medications, while others may struggle with refilling their medications on time and therefore go through lapses. Everything we have integrated into this platform was purposefully incorporated to help people who struggle to stick with their medication regimen no matter what they are specifically struggling with.
What it does
RxTrack is a comprehensive medication management app designed to revolutionize the way individuals manage their healthcare. It enables users to find new medical prescribers, understand their medications thoroughly, adhere to medication schedules, manage refills effortlessly, and communicate directly with healthcare providers. By centralizing these critical aspects of healthcare management, RxTrack empowers patients to take control of their health, ensuring better outcomes and reducing the risk of medication-related complications.
How we built it
We first figured that we should build this app in Flutter as an app would be more convenient for our users to use in this context due to its versatile and reliable nature. We then brainstormed ideas as to what could be causing people’s struggle to manage their medications. Afterward, we decided which ideas were most relevant and decided to implement them. As another idea would pop up in our development stage, we’d give careful consideration to it and decide whether we should implement it. We would use Figma to create a general idea of what each screen should look like, removing unnecessary parts to simplify the user experience as needed. We made sure that our dashboard didn’t have too many components as this could also confuse or otherwise mislead the user, letting them get lost within our app.
Challenges we ran into
We had to put ourselves in the shoes of our users. Many people take medications several times a day and so therefore we would have to make our flow and interface easy to understand and cooperate with. Doing anything more than clicking a button to register one’s ingestion of their medications would quickly turn into a chore for many users which would then in turn decrease engagement among our platform. Also, manually inputting all the information on a pill bottle into the app would become increasingly difficult with the more medications that one takes, so we incorporated computer vision technology which would allow us to get all the information we need within one picture provided by the user. Figuring out how to make our platform have various features while making the flow as inviting as possible was something we originally had trouble doing.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud of the fact that we were able to identify all the potential problems that people may have when managing their medications and came up with several solutions to these problems. Furthermore, we are proud of the fact that we were able to successfully synthesize all of our solutions into one platform such that they all went hand–in–hand and supported our overarching goal of making an application that never feels overwhelming for the user. This whole process of turning our insights into a real-world application is something we take immense pride in and we hope to continue this project so it can be transformed into something that genuinely helps many people in their journey to improved health and wellness.
What we learned
We learned about the significance of user-centric technology. Technology only has as much power as the users give it. With that said, it is so important to always keep this in mind when creating an app that allows users to help themselves without making it seem like a burden or chore. Using OpenCV to read in a pill bottle was not easy as none of our teammates had ever implemented this on a real project, although we knew all along that this would be an important feature to have. We worked hard to make user interactions with RxTrack easy. We hope that this project will pay off by being of use to many people.
What's next for RxTrack
We hope that we can have doctors and prescribers join the platform. This would allow for an even more seamless patient-to-provider interaction. We also want to create a reward system such as a hot streak to reinforce positive medication management behavior to make users feel engaged in their journey. Through this, we can help users cultivate habits that benefit their health and wellness for a lifetime to come. Transforming our medication reactions dashboard tab into a holistic journal so users can document their journey and how the medication regimen makes them feel would be useful for both the user and the provider as it allows both parties to get on the same page and foster a more understanding relationship.
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