We're trying something new... | Medical Students Making an App - Episode 1

Key Takeaways

hello everyone my name is Ali I'm Ben and we are medical students from Cambridge University we're in our fifth year and we're on our medical elective in Cambodia which is really really fun we've just come up with a really good idea for an app that we're going to make and we're going to share the details of it with [Music] you okay so coming to Cambodia everybody's been saying that they wish they'd written down all the surgeries that they've done so while I've been here being the very key medical student that I am uh I've tried to every day fill in this Excel spreadsheet uh with lots and lots of columns just so I can get a record of all the surgeries that we've been able to do while we've been here um and apparently this is something that students do in the UK as well common advice from surgical societies is that if if you're interested in surgery as a specialty and you see operations or you assist in operations you should probably make a list of them somewhere just as a record so if by the end of your medical school career you've done let's say I don't know 200 assists you don't want those to go to waste completely you can just kind of print out a list put it in your portfolio when you're applying for a job stuff like that yeah so it's a nice thing just to bring along with you um it's quick and easy for them toar look at and be like bang look at what plastic surgeries I've done for example problem with the current system is that if you want to do this a you have to know what to do um like I only got the advice about halfway through fifth year that you should be keeping one of these surgical log books the other problem is that even if you know what to do it's a bit of a pain in the bum to fill out this spreadsheet when you get home uh yeah sure you can launch the Google sheet tab on your phone and that's what a few of us have done but it's just it's not an easy input system so a common problem that I find I have as well when setting up the spreadsheet what do I need to include do I need to include the patient name probably not not identifiers where it was how do I describe what surgery I've been part of so it would be very nice if there was a spreadsheet that already had all these columns F in so that it's nice and easy you just input the data or the details that you need to and bang your away quick and easy so we're going to make an app that does exactly that it's going to be a nice Simple app that runs on IOS and Android uh which connects to a backhand database where you pretty much just store the details of all the operations that you've assisted in as a medical student let's say you've just done an operation uh you go on the app just enter the patient random identifier number which is is fine because there's no actual patient data associated with it and you just type in the name of your supervisor or the person who watchs you do the surgery and it sends it to the database it automatically records the date the time the hospital that you're at and then you have a log book we'd like to document the process of building this app to share with you guys uh via video we know that a lot of students a lot of medical students are particularly interested in med tech and in the idea of making apps but it seems like a lot of people don't really know where to start and haven't really done it before and from speaking to people it seems a lot of people want to learn how to code but don't know how to take something from idea to product so we'd like to share all the details with you via video the ins and outs and sort of the reasons why we're doing what we're doing and and and how it works and what Ali's just explained is pretty much my situation so since I've been here I've learned a lot already in terms of just building a website for example and I quite like to get to know a bit about how starting up a new project works as well and so this is a really good opportunity for me and I'd love to see how it goes as well yeah and in terms of background experience I've coded a few websites before but I've never actually made an app for iOS or Android so that'll be an interesting learning point for me and we're hoping that by kind of sharing the process with you guys giving you a look at behind the scenes about how we make an app we're hoping that that'll be useful and while we're building it if it's something that it looks like you know you at home could easily do with it's something that you feel like you've be missing out as well then then perfect you could be one of our first users we haven't actually worked out a name for this yet we will do another video on that but when we do there will be a website link somewhere on screen I'm like here here and everywhere once we found a name please go on that website put in your email address and we'll send you an email to let you know when the thing is done so you can start adding to your surgical log book yeah so thanks for watching uh we'd love it if you stayed with us and we kept you in the loop about this project of ours uh and maybe it will become something very useful hopefully yeah well maybe not but either way we'll we'll learn something we'll make some videos it'll be fun so yeah thanks for watching and we'll see you in the next one [Music] byebye