A client in our community reached out to our school program and asked for support. Our client’s son uses a feeding pump 24/7 for nutrition. The problem with the pump is that it has many alarms all of which sound the same whether the tube is kinked, if there is air in the tube, if the food cycle is finished, etc. So, when he is sleeping, if an alarm goes off he will turn off the pump immediately, not knowing the problem. Because of this our client may or may not get the required nutrients he needs. Our client struggled to find out the difference between certain alarms that the feeding pump projects and asked if we had any ideas to help fix this problem.
After brainstorming and meeting with the family, we came up with the idea to make an app to help designate the problem of the alarm sounds going off. Our App, Well Fed, is designed for people who use feeding pumps. The app will track the alarms and send an alert to the user to show what is happening with the feeding pump. The app will also show statistics and data from the feeding pump to help our client keep track of everything that happens with it. Our app will allow the user to make notes and hold vital information about doctors and emergency contacts.
We are currently teaching ourselves how to code in order to create our app “Well Fed” for a client in our community. We started with learning to code for Android devices (Java and Python) but discovered our client has an Apple device so we switched gears and began coding using Xcode. Xcode is able to hold different programming languages for us to use and experiment in for developing Apple products. We are incorporating a lot of technology into our project with computers, feeding pumps, coding languages and prototypes. We are also currently working with a feeding pump company to help connect our app to specific pumps and to find out the Science and Engineering behind the feeding pumps. We use math in our project to help calculate the rate at which the feeding pump will operate and how this will be configured into our app design. Other skills that our STEM project will help us with are our problem solving and critical thinking skills. We will have to use creativity and decision making in the process of creating our app. Our STEM project will teach us leadership and how to accept failure and overcome it.
The anticipated improvement to our local community is to help users who use feeding pumps. One example is a client in our community reached out to and asked for support for her son. He uses a feeding pump 24/7 for nutrition. The problem with the pump is that it has many alarms all of which sound the same so, when he is sleeping, if an alarm goes off he will turn off the pump immediately, not knowing the problem. Our client struggled to find out the difference between certain alarms that the feeding pump projects and asked if we had any ideas to help fix this problem. Thus our app Well Fed is currently being created. We anticipate being able to help hundreds if not thousands of people distinguish between the alarms on their feeding pumps. Our app is also unique because it will allow the user to track the feeding pump 24/7. Our app will give users a piece of mind that they are getting proper nutrition and they will be able to monitor their pump wherever they go.
We submitted our app idea to the Samsung Solves for Tomorrow contest and were State Finalist! We plan to continue to update our app next year and should be in the test phase within a few months.