VacciTracker

‍Problem Background  

Vaccinations are a crucial component of maintaining good health and preventing the spread of serious diseases. In Africa, ensuring that children receive their vaccinations on time can be a challenge due to various factors such as lack of access to healthcare, limited information and awareness, and busy schedules.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), vaccine coverage rates in some African countries are still low, putting children at risk of serious health complications. In many cases, parents are unable to keep track of their children's vaccination schedules, leading to missed appointments and a decreased level of protection against serious illnesses.

The situation is further compounded by the limited access to reliable information and resources. Many parents struggle to find accurate information on the recommended vaccination schedules, leaving them feeling unsure and unsure of what to do. This can lead to confusion and a lack of confidence in the vaccination process, making it even more difficult to ensure children receive their vaccinations on time.

Vaccitracker aims to address these challenges by providing a simple and convenient solution for parents to keep track of their children's vaccinations. With Vaccitracker, parents can create a personalized schedule, receive reminders and notifications, and track appointments, all in one convenient place. By making it easy to stay on top of vaccinations, Vaccitracker empowers African parents to protect their children's health and ensure they receive the care they need to lead healthy, happy lives.

User Pain Points

In today’s fast paced world, it is difficult for people to keep track of the things that they need to remember and do especially with all the socio-economic uncertainties. Remembering the dates and details of required vaccinations is not easy. Most hospitals do not provide an effective way for parents to remember their child’s vaccination appointments. The parents are given a vaccination card that could get damaged or easily replaced.  

Feedback

From the research that we did, more than 60% of parents confirmed having forgotten at least one vaccination appointment.

They have also expressed a desire for a system that provides periodic reminders for them

While testing the prototype, some parents explained that asides from remembering the appointment, they often get to the hospital to be told that they have run out of stock of the vaccine and would love it if there was a way to check this before going to the hospital.

Solution Explanation

Our product, Vaccitracker, is a comprehensive solution for parents to track the vaccination schedules of their children. The user-friendly interface allows parents to easily manage their children's health and stay on top of important vaccination dates.

Our Key Features

The Children Screen: displays a list of all the children associated with the parent's account, along with their individual vaccination schedules. This allows for a quick overview of each child's vaccination status, making it simple to track progress and stay on top of any missed or upcoming vaccinations.

The Reminder Section: allows parents to set reminders for all of their children's vaccinations, ensuring they never miss an important appointment.  These reminders 

can be customized to send notifications at specific dates making it easy to stay on top of the ever-changing vaccination schedules.

The Vaccination Wiki Page: provides a wealth of information about vaccinations, including articles and resources on the importance of vaccines

Lofi & Hifi Mockups

The app is designed to be simple, intuitive, and user-friendly, allowing parents to manage their children's health and vaccination schedules with ease.

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Whether you're a new parent or an experienced one, Vaccitracker makes it easy to keep your children's vaccination schedules on track. With just a few taps on your device, you can have peace of mind knowing that your children are getting the protection they need.

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Implementation Details‍

Technical implementation

• The application is hosted on vercel and it’s connected to an API hosted on Heroku.

           The tech stack

• The application was built using React Js, Redux toolkit and Bootstrap on the frontend and Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, and Rspec and Rubocop on the backend.

High level journey of a request

• The Backend is responsible for handling all HTTPS requests from the frontend. The request is authenticated using a JSON Web token (JWT), the backend then queries the database for the requested data and sends it back to the frontend as a JSON object.

• The front end accepts the data requested and updates the application state using the data returned by the request. This is displayed for the user to see and interact with.

Technical challenges

What was the hardest part of development?

• The hardest part of development is setting up and agreeing on workflow and version control. There was no single source state for the API. Also normalising the database to handle concurrent requests was a bit challenging

Does your app have any scaling issues?

• The backend of the application is currently deployed on heroku on a basic plan and runs on a less standard dyno. There might be downtime in request handling occasionally. Also, the database maintenance is not flexible on a basic plan. It is strictly dependent on the service time.

What are some key takeaways?

• As developers, we had to constantly communicate to make sure the user flow is in line with the API and database design. We also had to take feedback and criticism and use them to improve the application. This helped us to learn the importance of planning communication and teamwork.

Future Steps

We haven’t decided if we would be continuing with this project, but we plan to develop on and use the skills and experience we got to get jobs and add value to various product teams we might find ourselves in.