DoseMate

DoseMate is a proof of concept webapp designed to track patients' medicine use and to keep them accountable for adherence via notifications to their close family and reports to medical professionals.

Comment 1

Inspiration

The first idea we had was making a medicine scheduler app. That idea came from seeing our elderly relatives struggle with keeping track of the medicine they have to take. However, the project's focus began to shift into indicators of medicine adherence, and we ended up with an utility feature for patients to stay accountable for their medicine intake through contact with their family members and or emergency contact and reporting to the medical professionals.

What it does

DoseMate lets patients report their medicine use. If medicine non-adherence is detected (e.g. overdose, missed dose, or late dose), the patient is given a response box to explain any reason behind their failure to adherence, and this reasoning plus the incorrect dose in question is sent to the medical professionals. The professional may then communicate with the patient and, depending on the severity of the issue, advise them to set an appointment. For every failure to comply with the medical instructions, the patient's family members and or emergency contact is also notified in order to encourage them to stay on track with their prescription. Current solutions in the market are not sufficiently robust to see a genuine impact on the patient's medication adherence. Some solutions we researched proved to be riddled with human error, were bound by social class (i.e. lower classes may not use it enough), and others were too surveillant and invasive in the patient's life. DoseMate strikes a perfect balance reducing human error, being accessible to all social classes (as smartphone use is so prevalent regardless of class), and the patient's collected data is only what is necessary. DoseMate is a significant improvement on existing solutions.

How we built it

After deeply researching the subject matter and deliberating on various tech stacks, we decided on the following tech stack:

  • Python: the programming language we were most familiar with, and arguably the most versatile high-level language.
  • Flask: a web app framework for Python, using HTML/CSS templates to fill computed information from the data.json file.
  • Twilio: a library that lets us send WhatsApp text messages to the patient's emergency contacts.

Challenges we ran into

We deliberated on the solution for close to six hours--we were struggling to find a solution that was unique, innovative and applied to the challenge of patient safety. In the end, we were able to focus our scope on medicine adherence and indicator notifications. On the tech side of the project, we ran into multiple git branch conflicts that forced us to painstakingly merge the branches together. Twilio also proved difficult to set up and integrate with our app. Despite our struggles, we are happy to say we conquered these challenges as they arose!

Patient Safety Technology Challenge: Safety Alignment

Medicine adherence is an important unanswered question in the field of patient safety. DoseMate is aligned to help improve patient safety because it relays important information about the patient's adherence to their prescription, or lack thereof, to relevant parties. The patient's emergency contact(s) may then encourage the patient to continue with their medication, and medical professionals know exactly what the patient's recovery projection looks like by seeing their medicine adherence. DoseMate therefore is an app with maximizing patient safety at its core, specifically for the question of medicine adherence.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

If DoseMate were implemented into legitimate Patient Connect software, we are confident that it would diminish the rate of errors in medication use, increasing safety for all patients that use the app.

"What was your most memorable individual accomplishment?":

Felix: Figuring out how to convert a HH:MM string into usable numbers to calculate whether a dosage is taken late.

Mohnish: When the project idea finally clicked across the entire group.

Jay: When I received the first text message from Twilio!

Rohan: Seeing everyone smile when they pulled my CSS changes to the home page.

What we learned

  • How concerning Patient Safety is
    • 44% of diagnostic error comes from some sort of medication issue
    • And nobody seems to bat an eye; 70% of the general public is unaware about patient safety!!
  • Developing a web app using the Python Flask framework
  • Managing Git branches and working as team to develop software!

What's next for DoseMate

DoseMate's feature set can easily be extended now that the Flask templates and the data.json structure are constructed. We are considering extending DoseMate to include the scheduling features that we initially formulated, but after discussing with the Patient Safety Technology mentors, we understand that in order to ensure patient safety in implementing this feature, we would need to collaborate with medical professionals. Secure and reliable scheduling must take into consideration the interactions of all medications in question and the patient's medical history, among other factors.

Share this project:

Updates