My group and I were tasked with using Open Data Kit to create an asynchronous mobile application that could be used for any store and forward medical purposes. We decided to focus on the homeless community, and more specifically, in assisting the referral process for homeless individuals who were in short-term medical respite to long-term recovery and care.

We began the development by setting up an ODK aggregate server and linking it to the android phones that we had available. During this project, I took on a leadership role, assigning tasks to the other members and taking a majority of the responsibility for the development of the application by creating, testing and amending the XLS form in Excel. In-depth research was conducted on the current homeless referral, admission and discharge practices. We found that there wasn’t as much focus on the referral process into long-term care.

We identified that ensuring an accurate and efficient referral process results in a drop in re-admission rates, an improvement in the recovery of patients and a greater assurance of a maintained quality of life. After researching existing medical admission, referral, discharge forms and charity surveys in the homeless domain, we generated a set of questions and their characteristics and possible answers.

Our final app has the ability to quickly capture appropriate information pertaining to the homeless individual’s demographic and medical information and requirements. It is formatted in a way to allow the respite staff to enter information easily and quickly.