Bradenton teens develop app to help patients, doctors regulate medication dosages

BRADENTON, Fla. - At Braden River High school, a group of four friends is proving they can make a difference in the world even before they graduate.

It started with a classmate who nearly died from being prescribed the wrong dosage of a medication at a young age.

"He was administered way more than he was supposed to and he almost lost his life," said Jordan Sheehan.

Classmate Ava Biasini said they were shocked by their classmate's situation.

"It’s kind of surprising with all of the modern technology that we have that medicine dosages are still calculated by hand and so we kind of couldn't believe it that something like that could happen," Biasini explained.

Working from a distance, outside of their daily school workload, 17-year-old Jordan Sheehan, 18-year-old Kolby Wade, 16-year-old Nolwen Bachtle, and 17-year-old Ava Biasini -- all members of the Technology Student Association -- started designing an app to help administer the right amount of prescription medications.

They spent nearly four months researching medications and creating a medical dosage calculator app called Valitudo. It allows a doctor or physician's assistant to input a patient's information and the app returns a dosage amount.

"After you input all those parameters, based on the medicine you’re trying to calculate, the app will automatically calculate the dosage that you need," said Sheehan.

The students submitted their app to Congressman Vern Buchanan's 16th Congressional District App Challenge -- and it won.

"This was a very ambitious project, not like one that I’d done before, and it made me a lot more interested and steered me in the right path of what I want to do later," said Bachtle.

The teens hope their app will continue to catch people's attention, including those in the medical field.

The award was an honor, but saving a life is what they hope to do.

"We put all this hard work into it and when we can flip open the app and we can watch how a user can use it, that was by far the most exciting part for me because it made me realize how much we can actually impact lives by doing all of this," said Wade.