Adherence

Inspiration

Poor medical adherence has led to at least 125,000 American deaths annually. By forgetting to take medication, people put their health in serious danger. We at Adherence are determined to put an end to this growing problem and to help numerous people from Detroit, America and the world pay attention to this issue.

What it does

Our Android app allowing users to retrieve prescription data directly from the doctor's office while incorporating elements to further persuade users to take medication in a timely manner. The physician, after logging into the app, enters the patient's name, email address and prescription data. The patient can also login to retrieve the data so that they can view their prescription details. Additionally, the app also send users a notification when it is time to take the medication.

How we built it

The core app is built on Android Studio with the UI allowing doctors to add prescriptions and patients to view them. These prescriptions are then stored onto a firebase database where more information can be added and retrieved. The purpose of the NotificationCompat.Builder is to send a notification to the users phone regarding prescriptions through the firebase console.

Challenges we ran into

We first tried to use the Google Calendar API instead of the NotificationCompat.Builder API. The issue we came across was that we were not able to obtain authorised access to the full API due to some technical error. We then realised that the NotificationCompat.Builder would allow more flexibility with our notifications and would additionally allow us to bypass the error.

One issue we are still faced with, in regards to the notifications, is that we were not able to make the notifications appear at specific times and, therefore, we have to use the firebase console every time we want to send a notification to the phone. We are confident that given more time, it would not be too tough of a task to enable scheduled notifications.

Another issue we came across was when deciding whether to make use of relational vs non-relation databases. We chose to use non-relational databases because our data consisted of a patient with many attributes. The format of JSON that is used by non-relational databases (Where only the first child node is accessible) seemed to offer us a perfect fit to organize the data but later on we considered that relational databases would have been better to manage multiple prescriptions for each person. Since none of our members were familiar with working with databases (it was our first time in fact), we were not able to implement it properly but were still able to store and retrieve data in spite of an error in the values of the retrieved data.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Our app ensures that the patient has to put in the least amount of effort to be reminded of his prescriptions. After all, in order to successfully influence them to take their medication, we must see to it that users will not have to put significant effort into reminding themselves. This along with our bonus feature ideas would definitely achieve our intended result: to reduce the number of deaths and casualties due to poor medical adherence.

What we learned

Our team consists of two freshman at the University of Michigan AA and two non-CS masters students studying at McMaster University and University of Illinois Chicago. Therefore, the entire process was a great learning experience as we learned to make a functional Android application while employing the use of notifications and databases. Through the challenges, we exercised our problem solving skills and our ability to pivot our ideas in order to implement them as effectively as possible. We also learned the features integral to a successful application which were simplicity, reliability and functionality.

What's next for Adherence

Our first step would be to correct the errors in our code (notifications and database) to make sure the app functions smoothly. Next, we would polish the UI of the app and brainstorm/implement additional features which influence the user to take prescriptions on time. Once our app is is ready for use, we aim to create partnerships with hospitals and health insurance firms to be able to implement our app effectively. Upon initiation into the market, marketing strategies would be vital to spread the information about our app to potential users and hospitals.

Built With

• android-studio
• firebase
• notificationcompat.builder