Cherished

Cherished is a virtual caregiver for those with Alzheimer's Disease. Through task, image and video reminders, Cherished supports those with dementia and their caregivers by improving quality of life.

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Inspiration

Cherish all the precious moments and people in life. Being the most common cause of dementia, Alzheimer's Disease affects 1 in 9 people in the world, causing gradual memory loss and other cognitive impairment. Particularly in the early stages of the illness, people with Alzheimer's are at high risk of suffering from depression, and the frustration and hopelessness only worsens as recalling people and events become more and more difficult. Because of the extensive amount of care they need, their caregivers also experience the highest level of burden when compared to caregivers of other diseases.

Both of our team members have experienced this happening to our dear ones, which motivated us to build a product with the concept of a virtual caregiver in mind.

What it does

Cherished helps people with Alzheimer's to carry out daily tasks through minimalistic todo list and hold onto people and events that they find important to who they are by uploading it onto the web app. The web app can then be a safe space and reminder for them to store what they have done and will do, together with memories and people that they cherish.

How we built it

The web application was built with React. We also incorporated the Cloudinary server to enable photo and video uploads from your local computer or other social media sites.

Challenges we ran into

For both of us, it was the our first time using React and APIs, which made it challenging even to have a running product. We mainly faced difficulties in rendering the different pages properly in the intended way. It was also challenging to understand how to incorporate the API in saving and fetching our photos from the database server. Furthermore, since we were both on co-op internship, we found it difficult to work on the hackathon while working full-time.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

It was both of our first time working with React, and we are proud of having a prototype product that fits what we had in mind! While we still have a lot to learn, from both the professionals like the mentors from the hackathon or through Googling, we are glad that we were able to come up with a product that we loved and stand by.

What we learned

We learnt how to not give up and continue learning! In terms of technical skills, we learnt a lot working with React and APIs for the first time, how we can make products more accessible with better accessibility principles, and creating a product with a mission that we are proud of.

What's next for Cherished

In the future, we hope to increase the number of features we have for Cherished, such as pop-up notifications for users to give them task reminders and sending them regular messages of memories and people they cherish. We also hope to emphasize on the concept of virtual caregiver by allowing users to customize their own virtual caregiver, and personalize the web app more by making users feel like they are talking with the virtual caregiver avatar.

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