Improving Patient Medical Awareness through an Android-based Assistant

As modern advancements in medical technology continue to increase overall life expectancy, hospitals and healthcare systems are finding new and more efficient ways of storing extensive amounts of patient healthcare information. This progression finds people increasingly dependent on hospitals as the primary providers of medical data, ranging from immunization records to surgical history. However, the benefits of carrying a copy of personal health information are becoming increasingly evident. This project aims to create a simple, secure, and cohesive application that stores and retrieves user health information backed by Google’s Firebase cloud infrastructure. Data was collected to both explore the current need for such an application, and to test the usability of the product. The former was done using a multiple-choice survey distributed through social media to understand the necessity for a patient-held health file (PHF). Subsequently, user testing was performed with the intent to track the success of our application in meeting those needs. According to the data, there was a trend that suggested a significant need for a healthcare information storage device. This application, allowing for efficient and simple medical information storage and retrieval, was created for a target audience of those seeking to improve their medical information awareness, with a primary focus on the elderly population. Specific correlations between the frequency of physician visits and app usage were identified to target the potential use cases of our app. The outcome of this project succeeded in meeting the significant need for increased patient medical awareness in the healthcare community.