hen you are talking about supporting an individual’s healthcare needs, there is a clear need to see some documentation. Whether this is about verifying the information that has been provided or receiving a detailed note about an individual’s health condition, there is a clear need to see and share documents. Most healthcare organizations that provide grants or issue free health services have tech stacks that are capable of managing and securing files shared with them. AFFORDABLE is no different.
AFFORDABLE is an aggregation of programs from a collection of organizations that serve that community/population. They have the option to host their grants directly in AFFORDABLE, or simply link their database to AFFORDABLE webhooks so that their system listens for new applicants. If they want to consider AFFORDABLE applicants equally, they would also need access to the documents requested of other applicants that applied through other systems. Therefore, the ability to securely store and share files with other parties is imperative to the mission and success of AFFORDABLE.
While this old model worked well as a standalone system, it lacked a lot of the necessary features to allow a seamless integration into the full Affordable application. This was the key priority for the Ohio University team this semester. However, there were some significant issues getting started. Many of the old changes made by the previous team were not sustainable, and instantly broke the software when they tried to implement new features or start migrating components over. This resulted in a steep learning curve that challenged the students to rebuild many of these parts from the ground up. As a result, they learned a lot about how these file managers function behind the scenes.
We have been migrating our file manager UI away from our previous system given the burdens of the legacy code inherited largely from the repositories we were pulling our templates from. Our new model will have significantly increased user functionality to organize, upload, and download files associated with their account. This semester, they have worked hard developing and learning about their new repository for implementation, and have connected the necessary AWS services to the database to store, upload, and retrieve files.
They will be continuing their work into the spring semester, as they will be connecting various different UI components to our application. We are happy to see the progress the development team has made thus far, and we are looking forward to their progress and integration work in the spring. Read the experiences from Chase King, one of the team leaders working on the file system this fall.
a. Where are you currently enrolled in college?
Ohio University
b. What is your development team name? Who is your professor?
Our team name is ACZ (Short for Amos, Chase, Zac). Our professor is Dr. Nasseef Abukamail.
c. Who were the members on your team?
Amos Agyeman
Chase King
Zac Baker
d. What was the goal of your software engineering project?
The goal of our project was to create a web-based file manager to allow people seeking aid to share documents and fill out applications for medical financial aid.
e. What tool/features did you have to create?
We had to implement a React-based file manager frontend and a backend that communicates with both a SQL database and an AWS S3 bucket. The frontend allows for user input, and the backend handles the file storage and retrieval.
f. What skills did you learn during the semester?
None of us were well-versed in the technology stack, so we all were able to learn NodeJS and Typescript. Individually, some of us dove deeper into different areas such as React, TypeORM, and the AWS Development Kit.
g. What did you enjoy about working with Affordable?
We enjoyed that our work was going to a good cause. This is the first time any of us had worked on a major project outside of school. The weekly meetings were also super helpful. We were able to bring up any issues we had encountered and receive feedback.
h. What are your future career plans?
My future career plan is to become a software engineer in Columbus, Ohio. I have been searching for jobs and interviewing in that area, and I am hopeful of lining something up before graduation.
