Overview

In March 2021 I attended a virtual Hackaton called Starthack, based in St Gallen, Switzerland. I truly did not know what to expect from the experience. I teamed up with 2 other people and we created a team, that tried to solve the problem assigned by the Hackaton major sponsor, Microsoft in just 36 hours.

I can say it was pretty fun and I was surprised how much work I can accomplish, being under pressure in such a short period and I would recommend it to young professionals looking to build a career in tech.

Don't like reading? Here is the video.

Problem Statement

Vision

Outcomes

Patients are often confronted with a lot of medical information. Just imagine you are a patient that just got a severe medical diagnosis. Talking to your doctor for a few minutes leaves you with more open questions than answers. We're looking for innovative, state-of-the-art contributions to make medical services easier to understand for patients.
Web App MVP created from Figma prototype and complete business model presentation
Tomas Hrncir - UX/UI
Sabine Holler - Development
Ch. Salivaras - Business

Design Process

Ideation

We started with defining a problem statement and then brainstorming about possible solutions. In an ideal world, we would have spent a lot more time carefully defining the problem, before jumping to solutions, but this is the magic of hackathons. Instead, we defined problem and solution at the same time.

Design

Creating a project from scratch can be a daunting one, that's why we established the goal, set roles, and agreed on the final solution in the early stage.  We brainstormed about many various features and agreed that over the next 22 hours we would focus on the following features:
I used the rapid-prototyping method and sketched the main features and dashboard, before starting with the design I created a basic style guide using the Microsoft UI kit.

Designing

As the developer worked on the database of our app, I started with designs for our homepage. First I spent a couple of hours conducting the competitive analysis.

I studied healthcare products, that are providing the storage of medical documentation and companies offering online consultations with healthcare specialists. I wanted to achieve making the healthcare process simple as possible. I chose the blue & green combination because it reflects healthcare and adding a little bit of fun and taking away the stress from the medical enviroment.

Usability Testing

While finishing feature of live calls, developer started exporting my designs from Figma and transforming them into Web App. When I finished task flows of three main features I decided to conduct usability testing with Microsoft mentors to get a feedback on my designs.
I’ve discovered several usability problems, which were fixed immediately before they got into development.

Development

Once backend infrastructure were created using Google Firebase and Node.js our developer started exporting the components and implementing them in the app using React.js
You check check the source code on Github.

Business

Our Product was named Care For U, because it's attempting to provide free healthcare advice for everyone, wherever they are. Our patients could store their data in the app and share it with doctors in order to achieve more efficient medical appointments, that are not based on country restrictions.  We would get funds from selling data (with user's contents for targeted advertisements) and in a safe way, such as through blockchain, in order to pay healthcare specialists.  This would provide doctors with the benefits of working remotely & adding additional income to their income stream. Simultaneously, for patients, the platform could facilitate online, international storage of their medical records, which can then be used to consult doctors on healthcare advice, amongst other things in the future. The competitive advantage of our platform is that it does not require patients insurance, while also enabling a patient's medical history to be translated into multiple languages, thus expediting accurate, free, medical advice for anyone with a phone and a web connection.

In essence, Care For U, attempts to solve a myriad of problems in the healthcare industry. For one, it discourages the congestion of patients in hospitals who are concerned with general healthcare questions that can be answered through our platform, a solution that is in desperate need in pandemic times. Additionally, unlike any other telemedicine apps, Care For U, enables anyone to have access to general healthcare advice, regardless of whether they have insurance or not. This can be carried out through blockchain technology, enabling trust and anonymity between three parties (patients, doctors, companies), in a way that is efficient and easy for the patients to give consent. Consequently, this means that you can have your medical records with you when you travel or wherever you are in the world and share them whenever you want with a healthcare specialist. Finally, the Care For U platform allows patients and general users with healthcare questions to obtain accurate advice from specialists rather than search on the web. This makes them less susceptible to misunderstanding medical information, as well as being misled by inaccurate conclusions.

In times such as the one we currently live in, it seems ever more important that healthcare is a right we all deserve. Care For U brings that to life!

Get a feeling how the app works

Onboarding

Designing a flexible set of steps that can capture the amount of data the user feels comfortable submitting - prioritizing name, email, and password fields accompanied with slide-though onboarding.
Online Appointment

Providing to our customer initial questionnare, which with an outcome of keywords, which will help witch matching the right specialist.
Add Medical Records

Everyone can track of his medical records and can add the doctor reports in various languages, which will be translated and saved automatically and stored safely in the database.

Learnings

I was really surprised how much work I can do, while being under pressure, but working with a team and real time collaborate together. I think that an important step was to ignite the idea and brainstorm in the early stages, then set the goal we all try to achieve. Divide all the responsibilities are essential as well as regular meet ups, which we had every 4 hours and everyone said, what he was working on and the problems they are facing right now. Eventhough we didn’t win I really enjoyed the weekend and it was a valuable experience.

My Suitcase

Next project

Hatti

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