HealthThrive
Make following treatment plan fun and seamless.
Created on 8th November 2024
•
HealthThrive
Make following treatment plan fun and seamless.
The problem HealthThrive solves
Having a disease is painful, and it is made worse having to follow a boring schedule where you have to endure horrible tasting medicine, and understandably, patients often struggle to follow their treatment plans, skipping their required medication and potentially leading to devastating outcomes. This is largely due to the repetitive nature of medical treatment and the fact that people are psychologically reluctant to face their treatment, what if instead of taking medicine you are going on a journey of saving a poor hungry cat. This app is here to transform how patients stick to their treatment plans! Through gamification, it motivates and inspires users, making the treatment journey smooth and engaging. Say goodbye to seeing medication as the enemy—this app turns it into a trusted friend on the path to better health!
In our project, users care for a hungry pet cat who craves food. Users earn “cat coins” by completing their daily treatment tasks, such as taking medicine at 9:00 am. The cat interacts with users through dialogue, and they can respond accordingly.
To start, users upload an image of their health record, and the app displays their treatment plan on the homepage. Users complete daily treatment goals by ticking checkboxes, while a progress bar tracks their daily progress. When completed, the progress bar awards “cat coins,” which can be used in the food store to buy food for the cat. Users can then use the food to feed their cat, who responds positively in a speech bubble, motivating them to keep following their treatment plan.
Treatments can often feel isolating, especially for individuals managing long-term conditions. Having a virtual pet that thanks users each time they complete a task provides a sense of companionship, which can reduce feelings of loneliness and isolation. This small gesture—being thanked by a cute cat—adds warmth and positivity to the treatment routine.
Challenges we ran into
Ideation:
We initially proposed the idea of developing a health record analyzer that would process health record PDFs and provide lifestyle suggestions. However, we quickly recognized that the advice generated might lack the specificity needed to be truly beneficial for individuals, due to the challenges in collecting comprehensive personal data. As a result, we pivoted our focus towards enhancing motivation for following treatment plans.
During the development process, we shifted from merely reformatting treatment plans to a more engaging, gamified approach by incorporating a cute digital pet cat as a motivational element.
Specific Technical Challenges:
We encountered minor technical issues, such as conflicting pushes and code collisions, which we eventually resolved through force pushes. Another challenge was ensuring that various Swift pages could access shared variables, such as the “cat coin” counter. To address this, we chose to utilize an environment object, defining an observable object and injecting it into the SwiftUI environment, allowing any view to access it.
A key challenge in our project was correctly configuring API endpoints and formatting HTTP requests to meet OpenAI’s chat completion standards. By studying the documentation closely and testing different configurations, we successfully streamlined our API integration for reliable outputs.
For the homepage, we initially envisioned a color-coded calendar where each date would turn green after completing the day’s treatment. However, due to limitations in Swift’s built-in calendar library, we decided to optimize our time by focusing on the data storage aspect. The calendar now stores each day’s treatment plan and allows users to view the specific treatments scheduled per day.
Future vision:
Given more time, we envision adding a community feature where patients can connect, support each other, and engage in friendly competition to see who excels at “pleasing the cat”!
Tracks Applied (1)
Best Beginner Team
Technologies used