Healthcare hack for HackIllinois 2015
MedPhrase is an iOS app for iPhone and iPad that simplifies and facilitates medical diagnoses. Conventional online symptom checkers, such as WebMD, are confusing and flooded with complicated medical terminology, which frustrate users. They are also notorious for diagnosing relatively mild symptoms as severe diseases, which are neither helpful nor accurate. For example, one of our team members, Jack, inputted the symptoms of the common cold into WebMD and was diagnosed as being pregnant… MedPhrase exists to streamline this process in order to provide accurate diagnoses by simplifying symptom entry and referring users to professionals.
The two main features of MedPhrase include minimalist, intuitive symptom entry and a doctor finder. Symptoms are easily entered using our dynamic Simple Sentence template. For example, a Simple Sentence may read “I have a CHEST FRACTURE for MULTIPLE HOURS with EXTREME discomfort”. Using a simple sentence format, users are able to precisely articulate their problems using their native language while avoiding complex medical terminology. In a similar manner, the Simple Sentence provides doctors with valuable patient symptoms to help with their diagnosis. After the simple sentence is inputted, the app provides a course of action or a doctor to visit to receive a proper diagnosis. The app will then provide a map of nearby doctors of this type using the Find a Doctor feature and provide information to contact them.
It's not about what you need to know, but about who you need to see. By using MedPhrase, we hope to help users better understand their own medical symptoms and connect them with adequate care.
- iOS only (web version coming soon)
- Backend hosted by Microsoft Azure
- Backend written in Node.js
- Location data retrieved from Factual