Assist

Inspiration

One of our team member's father and their grandfather were both veterans. When speaking with them about the biggest problem currently facing veterans, they were unanimous in describing the inefficiencies of the healthcare and assistance systems that are available to veterans. In this way, we took on the challenge of simplifying the entire veteran help process by streamlining appointment scheduling, granting digital resource access through a personal assistant UI, and adding additional frameworks for future integration by the VA that so desperately needs to move into the digital age.

What it does

-Serves as a foundation for health assistance via digital access to physical, mental, and emotional help -Priority scheduler (based on severity) for the VA to utilize -Geolocation and voice commands for user accessibility -Provides instant resources for mental challenges such as depression, anxiety, and family issues -Allows veterans to access a network of applications such as auto-generating healthcare vouchers and requesting care reimbursement

How I built it

We used Java on the mobile avenue to build a native Android application. Using Google Voice Recognition, we process user speech inputs with our own NLP systems that takes into account context to determine response. We then push that response back out with TTS for a personal assistant experience. On the web side, we're using Django to run and host an SQLite database to which we send user data when they need to schedule a VA appointment.

Challenges I ran into

We couldn't find a suitable nlp api to employ that understood our context, so we had to create our own.

What's next for Assist

We anticipate an opportunity for this app to grow in capabilities as new policies push for system reform. We developed not only several front-end capabilities and useful tools that are instantly usable, but also a framework for future integration into the VA's system for the automation and digitalization of complicated paper processes.