Patient Care Assistant – An App to Improve and Facilitate the Rehabilitation Process of In-Patients
By Jonathan Cao
Senior Category (Grades 11-12)
Innovation | Engineering and Computer Science
Application-based technology is not widely practiced in healthcare environments. Many hospitals and rehabilitation centres simply lack the funding to support the implementation of digital systems, and only the occasional institution may use mobile platforms as merely a mode of communication among staff members.
This project focuses on the creation of an app, Patient Care Assistant, to provide an interface that allows interaction between in-patients and healthcare professionals. The software programming was based on Java using the Android Studios development environment. The app successfully proved a prototype interface that would enable patients to view their daily schedule and oversee their own care plan. Additionally, the app had a section for patients to express their feelings each day; this data would be closely monitored by doctors and their teams to help patients maintain emotional well-being. Due to time limitations, only these three main functions were part of the prototype, but in the future, the app can be extended to include features such as sending alerts to family members in the event of changes in a patient’s condition and displaying personalized health data.
Although a testing phase with actual patients has yet to be conducted, the concept of the app is nonetheless relevant and applicable. Past studies have already proved that patients whose personal needs and preferences were taken into account when deciding on care plans and treatment were more satisfied and therefore had better experiences with the healthcare system. This can only be achieved through first engaging with patients, and the app created in this project is the gateway to doing just that.
