High-Level Project Summary
Agapay is your personalized companion to stay safe during the Covid-19 pandemic. Built with data from reliable sources provided by NASA and agencies like the WHO and the CDC, Agapay looks out for the user by providing them a complete tool kit to stay safe! Agapay does not only include a self-assessment for possible infection, it also has a PPE recommender and most importantly, a proximity risk assessment module. Agapay is the best covid-19 companion because staying safe means staying informed.
Link to Project "Demo"
Link to Final Project
Detailed Project Description
Agapay is a personalized Covid-19 companion app with an emphasis on staying safe by staying informed!
The app does not store any client information and only requires access to user location for proximity risk assessment to various levels of Covid-19 infections in the area.
With Agapay, you get the following features in one app that we call "Your Covid-19 Companion":
- a self-assessment tool based on the CDC Covid-19 Checkbot which does not diagnose but recommends either a current safety (or asymptomatic) state and nearby health facilities for possible cases;
- a PPE Recommender that guides you on what PPE to use depending on the activity you want to do, advising the use of either face masks or face shields depending on the venue visited, whether with company or alone, or whether the place is crowded or not;
- a Covid-19 Fact Sheet with information from the WHO for those who may not have a full understanding of what Covid-19 really is and how we can end it together;
- a Covid-19 Tracker based on NASA partner data that shows daily average cases and worldwide Covid-19 statistics ; and
- a proximity assessment module that uses the same NASA data used in the Covid-19 tracker to identify any possible, mild, or severe cases that exist around you -- so you can stay safe by staying informed.
Agapay was built on an app building platform called AppGyver. Because modern problems require modern solutions. AppGyver provides many powerful tools, that in the right hands and with the right ideas, is a super useful tool in providing software solutions. Additionally, many tools were used to implement the solution. However, AppGyver and other tools had to be used in addition to knowledge of how to use data, javascript and python programming, and basic understanding of database manipulation.
With the creation of an app like Agapay, we have 2 important goals: to help people make decisions based on data and science, and to show that modern problems like Covid-19 have solutions that we can all contribute in solving -- with or without complete grasp of software development. Agapay will be developed more. As we learn more about data, as we grow in knowledge and skills, future versions of Agapay will feature more robust and dynamic use of data with integration of machine learning algorithms and other modern technologies. But, our team believes that even as Agapay is now, it will be a helpful tool to inch closer towards helping stop the spread of Covid-19 -- specially in the Philippines. It is our "alternative solution".
Space Agency Data
For this problem, the provided resources were the biggest inspiration for the implementation. Specifically:
- The CDC Covid Data Tracker
- ESA NASA JAXA EARTH OBSERVING DASHBOARD RESOURCES
- JHU COVID-19 Dashboard—Center for systems science and engineering at JHU
In detail, the different Space Agency and partner agency data that we used were key to identifying specific features of the app. The CDC Covid Data Tracker was used as the idea for how to represent our own data and their CDC Covid-19 Chatbot was also the basis of our self-assessment check. Features from the ESA NASA JAXA EARTH OBSERVING DASHBOARD was our main goal in implementing the covid-19 proximity risk assessment feature of the app -- the very backbone of our solution. Lastly, the data from the JHU covid-19 Dashboard allowed us to use specific data that was available for the Philippines
The resources that NASA gave us were extremely helpful and critical to the conception of the idea and its implemented solution.
Hackathon Journey
The Hackathon journey is the first for the team! Every member was tested, not only technically, but also creatively! Ideas, no matter how great, aren't useful if we are unable to implement it. With the help of the mentors who spoke to the team and gave invaluable constructive feedback, the team was able to narrow down the problem and understand ways to implement the idea of the solution (even if some ideas had to be trimmed down to focus on the most important aspects of the solution)!
The Covid-19 pandemic is not a situation that will be resolved soon. Especially in developing countries like the Philippines, our worlds have been turned upside down due to all the issues that arose due to Covid-19. We want to find ways to help, and we want find ways to keep people safe. Agapay is our way to help, even in the simplest way that we can.
The approach to creating and solidifying the solution was not simple. It can be challenging if you are not adept with programming or creating software solutions. But, as the famous saying goes, if there is a will then there is definitely a way. The team members learned a lot of new things in the effort to implement the solution, and it provided so many avenues to manage data and implement solutions that we've never tried to implement in the past. Our basic steps consisted of the following:
- Creating the flowchart that showed our ideas on how the app should work.
- Consulting with field experts/mentors to further improve and trim down an initially complex idea. We were thinking too big!
- Learning React Native, which we have not used before, then using AppGyver to implement our solution.
- Obtaining, cleaning, and learning how to visually represent our data.
- Implementing our idea following a simple theme, to not scare users away and to make a simple and elegant app that will help them stay informed about and safe from Covid-19.
All the setbacks and the challenges had to be met head on with no hesitation and an understanding that great things never come easy. Even though it was implemented on an app building tool, it required understanding of and coding in javascript, databases and data visualization.
The biggest and most sincere thanks goes to all the mentors we spoke with on the first day. Next to that, the individual team members that accepted challenges that were unfamiliar to them and met criticism with enthusiasm to improve.
References
https://www.appgyver.com/
https://www.canva.com/
https://documenter.getpostman.com/view/12463261/T1LV9jLU
https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/symptoms-testing/coronavirus-self-checker.html
https://github.com/Simperfy/Covid-19-API-Philippines-DOH
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019?adgroupsurvey={adgroupsurvey}&gclid=CjwKCAjw49qKBhAoEiwAHQVTo5Bd7bBhCznvNm8veOFZGHXqNG_ytf0txJax6mTSLIHI0MD2HYNwFhoCwysQAvD_BwE
https://doh.gov.ph/covid19tracker
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/19w5AizEH1s3T54FfpXM1WsuENwo9MN-0
https://staruml.io/
https://www.mapbox.com
https://infogram.com
Tags
#covid19tracker #agapay #proximityrisk #pperecommender #mobileapp #calculatetherisk
Global Judging
This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.