MedLink
Where Health Meets Help—Effortlessly and Effectively
Created on 26th April 2025
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MedLink
Where Health Meets Help—Effortlessly and Effectively
The problem MedLink solves
Many people have their medical records scattered in different places, which can lead to mistakes and missing information when they need care—over 50% of patients still rely on paper records (Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 2012). Blood shortages are common, and in some emergencies, this can mean patients don’t get help in time (Asian Journal of Transfusion Science, 2022). More than 40% of patients forget to take their medicines as prescribed, causing serious health problems (Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care, 2021). Also, many people—especially those facing health stigma—feel uncomfortable asking for help in public, leading to unmet needs (BMC Psychiatry, 2023). That’s why there is a need for one easy-to-use app that keeps medical records safe, sends emergency and donor alerts, lets people ask for help anonymously, reminds patients about medicines, and helps them find hospitals easily.
Challenges we ran into
While building the MedLink app, we faced several challenges, particularly with integration of external APIs for fetching medical data. Ensuring smooth communication between our app and external servers for retrieving up-to-date information while maintaining low latency proved to be complex.
Additionally, managing user authentication and role-based access (e.g., different views for doctors, patients, and administrators) was tricky, as we needed to ensure secure and seamless user experiences across all platforms. This required custom Firebase rules and extensive testing.
Another challenge was ensuring data consistency during real-time updates. For example, when patient information or prescription data was edited by the doctor, it was important that the changes reflected immediately for the patient without causing any discrepancies.
To overcome these hurdles:
We implemented retry mechanisms for API calls and improved error handling to ensure smoother interaction with external services.
We used Firebase’s Firestore security rules and tested role-based access extensively to ensure proper authentication and authorization.
Real-time synchronization was optimized by using Firebase’s real-time capabilities with listeners to update data instantly across users.