Welcome to My Project

During weekdays, Cindy has to go to work at 9:00 AM after she sends her son to her mother’s home. Cindy will pick up her son after work at around 6:00 PM. It’s 7:30 AM, Cindy wakes her son up peacefully as usual. She realizes that there are patches of red and itchy skin on her son’s cheeks and some on the neck. She thinks making an appointment may need to wait for several days, but the closest clinic for walk-in service is about an hour’s drive. She doesn’t have time to take her son to wait at the clinic for a walk-in. During her breakfast, she visits the Healthline site and tries to use the Symptom Checker to find any solutions. The Symptom Checker also allows Cindy to filter keywords to get more accurate results. It’s possible that her son has normal eczema, and the site provides several options to help with symptoms.

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On the same page, Cindy is allowed to visit a physician online on the same day from 8 AM to 8 PM, and she can choose a preferred physician that speaks her language. Luckily, Cindy can choose the 8 AM meeting with a Chinese-speaking physician; otherwise, she will need to wait until the next available appointment at 6:30 PM.

Cindy soon finishes breakfast and turns on the Zoom meeting on her laptop. The consulting lasts 30 minutes, and the physician lists out foods to eat and avoid when having eczema. In minutes, the physician sends out the prescriptions to Cindy’s preferred pharmacy. Cindy can pick up the medication after she receives notification from the pharmacy through the message. At about 9:00 PM, Cindy sends her son to her mother’s home, and she gives her mother the list of food recommended by the physician (written in Chinese). She asks her mother to pick up the medication in the nearby Walgreens Pharmacy if she is available. Otherwise, she’ll need to pick up after work. With the help of a virtual meeting with a physician, Cindy is able to keep her son healthy and go to work without worrying too much about her family.

Every morning at 6:30, Paul gets up to start his workday because early morning is one of the peak times for Uber drivers. He does not have time to make breakfast, so he drives to the nearby McDonald’s to buy a Sausage Burrito. During lunchtime, Paul often visits Panda Express before he takes a nap in his car. Paul finishes driving at about 6:00 PM and has dinner with his family. After dinner, he usually lies on the couch to play with his phone or iPad. This is Paul’s daily routine.

However, he feels like his situation is getting worse as he has increased sweating even after dinner in the winter, and has trouble breathing at night. He begins to pay more attention to the health news and visits some health sites when he has time. Sometimes he would take a walk in the backyard after dinner and does some simple exercises. However, he couldn’t stay motivated because he does not see any changes in his body. One day, when he’s browsing the healthline website, he happens to see a forum created for people with obesity to share experience, and there are specialists answering questions. Users can also make appointments with specialists to do a weekly 10 minutes check-in so that the specialists can set up healthy meal plans and workouts for individuals.

Users are able to set up an account on the website to enter their daily workout time and weight into a progress tool. Even if Paul does not have time to meet with a specialist every week, he can do the daily workout/diet logs using the progress tool and stick to the plan. In this way, the specialist can keep track of the progress to make adjustments to the plan. With the doctor’s professional advice and the tool to track the progress, after a month of using the health site, Paul successfully loses 10 pounds.

Doria is a hard-working third-year CS major student. Despite her hectic class schedule, she also works part-time on campus as a front desk. After finishing the work, she nearly has time to join parties with friends. She usually stays up very late to get her homework and projects done. While she stresses over busy schedules, she is so frustrated to find out she has irregular menstrual cycles. Worse still, she may suffer from depression when facing pressure from school and the process of applying for internships. Her depression and terrible health condition make her feel isolated.

When she is feeling emotionally distressed, she often goes on social networking sites to share her thoughts instead of talking to her friends and families. She also tends to read some articles from health sites to see if she can get more information to improve her health. She tries to enter “depression” to the search box to see if she can find any helpful information. However, she does not want to read long and tedious medical reports. She also has concerns with information reliability from those sites. She happens to read an article from the Healthline site about college life and depression. There is a subsection talking about how depression affects women’s menstrual cycle, which triggers Doria’s interest. The article does not use many complex medical terms, and it allows users to leave comments or shares their thoughts, views, and emotions anonymously. Doria feels delighted as she finds out many college students also have the same experience.

The site also offers a chatbox for users to talk to a professional psychologist. The chatbox is 24/7 available whenever users need some professional guidance. If needed, the psychologist may suggest having a video meet-up with Doria to provide better treatment. Though Doria is skeptical about the reliability of the chatbox, she gives it a try. She also receives psychological treatment through video consultation. She feels like she is being taken care of, and she can talk to someone she can trust. Besides taking antidepressant medication and hormone medication, the psychologist also suggests well-balanced meals throughout the day. To keep monitoring Doria’s health, she is encouraged to share her progress on the site with the psychologists or any specialists she prefers.