Posted by anderc8 on Monday, December 19, 2016 in Mobile Cloud Computing, News.

Dr. Silver demonstrates on Sirui how the application might be used in a physical exam. This was a pivotal moment in the design process and critical for creating the final workflow of the app.

Blog post written by Sirui Ma, a Vanderbilt student enrolled in UNIV 3278 (Tackling Big Questions with Mobile Cloud Computing)

This semester, as part of the inaugural class of UNIV 3278 Tackling Big Questions with Mobile Computing, I have been leading a team of software engineers to develop a mobile application to improve malnutrition screening at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. The course began with lectures on leading software development projects, a completely foreign topic for me and my fellow UNIV students. We learned about various ways of communicating effectively with software engineers, managing the expectations of clients, and leading a development process centered on creating a product with demonstrable progress. These lessons would prove critical as we moved into the actual development phase. These initial lectures were followed by a series of presentations from mentors from all different areas of the university. The beauty of these presentations is that they don’t lay out projects for you; rather, mentors present particular problem in their field and the prerogative lies on us to conceptualize and create novel solutions.

Based on my interest in medicine, I knew I was going to work with one of the mentors from the medical center, and they posed various interesting problems from adolescent diabetes management to pediatric asthma monitoring. I was fascinated by a presentation on the pervasiveness of malnutrition in hospitals and realized that I could help develop a mobile application that could tackle this serious problem. I decided to propose a project structured around this issue, and I was paired with Dr. Heidi Silver, a professor and researcher at the Vanderbilt Center for Human Nutrition.

After my initial proposal, I was assigned a team of three computer science majors. We got to work quickly on fine-tuning the specifications defining application functionality, working closely with Dr. Silver and her team on deciding what features were to be included. The project was revised several times as we moved towards a refined plan for the mobile application. Once development began, I structured our process around producing a weekly demo of progress to Dr. Silver and her team. The feedback we received was critical for shaping future iterations of the application.

Nutri-Risk, as we came to call the application, is an iOS application that integrates seamlessly with a standard physical examination to guide healthcare providers through screening their patients for symptoms of malnutrition. Providers are given quick access to pertinent diagnostic information, and Nutri-Risk produces a summary of the examination that aids in producing a final diagnosis of malnutrition. Furthermore, user engagement with the application is monitored to assess specific user behavioral patterns, and notifications can be readily deployed to encourage application use.

This final product represents the hard work and dedication of a team with diverse skill-sets (software engineers, project managers, and medical experts) unified by the singular goal of tackling malnutrition. This tremendously unique course offering has effectively created bridges across the School of Engineering, College of Arts and Science, and Vanderbilt University Medical Center, promoting interdisciplinary work in a way I never thought possible. Being able to collaborate actively with students and mentors across campus on challenging projects has taught me the synergistic output possible in combining diverse talents and perspectives, and this course has also effectively prepared me for tackling the challenges that can arise in interdisciplinary collaboration. For someone like me who plans to pursue a career in medicine and mobile health, the experience that UNIV 3278 has provided is simply invaluable.

Nutri-Risk represents an ongoing development process, and I can’t wait to see what another semester of collaborative work can accomplish on this mobile application. Stay tuned!