Inspiration
Our original inspiration came from our own experiences with finding medical care in our area. Personally we have both run into times when we didn't know where to go for a medical visit, only to find too many choices with very little information.
What it does
We have aggregated data from across over 9,000 individual medical practices and created a system to allow patents to search for well trained and highly rated practices in their area. It allows patients to connect to practitioners and gives them the tools to make an informed decision on where they want to take their business.
How we built it
We build the web-app using the Python based web framework Flask to dynamically generate new content based on our backed database. We used the existing APIs of the US government health registry to find many locations, supplementing this with other databases from private firms. The front-end is written in HTML and CSS being backed up by Bootstrap for rapid prototyping. We then created parametric filters to allow users to select what they want in a healthcare provider.
Challenges we ran into
The data that is currently available in the large scale is full of gaps and inconsistencies, in addition, many fields that would seem like simple information are simply missing from the public record, such as the addresses for the offices. To resolve this problem we used the Google Places API that allowed us to pinpoint the locations of offices based on the name alone.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We're proud of how we were able to take an idea, making healthcare provider information available, and create a fully functional prototype in under 48 hours. We are also proud to participate in our first Hackathon and hope to make many trips in the future.
What we learned
We both had the opportunity to learn the web framework Flask. We also learned about and used the Google cloud APIs to gather data that would be impossible to find otherwise. More importantly, however, we learned how to think through problems as they faced us and look for solutions in the simplest of things. This shift in thinking is what allowed us to get so far.
What's next for Healthry
We want to include insurance data to allow patients to find doctors and medical practices that allow them to use their insurance. A major problem in the medical world is the lack of information and this can lead to confusion, this advancement would seek to resolve some of these ambiguities.
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