myRx wins Rep. C. Scott Franklin’s 2022 Congressional App Challenge in Florida’s 15th District
Rep. C. Scott Franklin has named Suchi Patel, an 11th Grader at Middleton High School, as the winner of the 2022 Congressional App Challenge in Florida’s 15th District.
When asked what inspired the creation of myRx, the student said, ”When my diabetic grandfather was sent to the ER after a severe drug-to-drug interaction, I knew that there had to be a solution that could prevent this from ever happening again. After this event, I was left with a deep impression as one of the geriatric physicians informed me of his concern that many older adults are taking many drugs and they are often concerned about the potential interactions and medical complications. I soon realized that there was no readily available technology in the market that could simplify the prescriptions my grandfather was given through an accessible medium. So, I created myRx. My passion for medicine and computer science inspired me to take on the challenge and create this app using artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms. My goal was to create an easily available smartphone app to assist doctors and caregivers in checking any potential food or drug interactions in order to allay the worries of many older patients who are taking many medications at once, and to lessen the strain on them.”
The Congressional App Challenge smashed previous participation records in 2022. All told, 9,011 students registered for this year’s competition – creating 2,707 fully-functioning apps for 335 Members of Congress across 50 states, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Mariana Islands, American Samoa, and the District of Columbia. This year’s competition set the record for most student registrations, most apps submitted, most apps per district submitted, and most districts receiving over 20 apps. The wildly successful competition continues to impress upon House Members the importance of computer science education and the need to develop a pipeline of diverse, domestic STEM talent.
The Congressional App Challenge is an official initiative of the U.S. House of Representatives, where Members of Congress host contests in their districts for middle school and high school students, encouraging them to learn to code and inspiring them to pursue careers in computer science. Each participating Member of Congress selects a winning app from their district, and each winning team is invited to showcase their winning app to Congress during our annual #HouseOfCode festival. The program is a public-private partnership made possible through funding from Omidyar Network, AWS, Rise, theCoderSchool, Apple, and others.
The 2023 Congressional App Challenge will launch in June of 2023, and eligible students can pre-register for the competition now.