Glossary
Medical and technical terms used across the DocStock presentations, the lab deliverables, and this site.
- Adherence
- The extent to which a user follows their prescribed medication schedule, including taking medication at the correct time, frequency, and dosage.
- Adherence report
- A summary of doses taken on time, taken late, and missed over a chosen date range. DocStock can export it as a PDF or CSV file for a healthcare provider.
- bcrypt
- A password-hashing algorithm designed to be slow to compute, which makes stolen password data much harder to crack. DocStock uses it to hash passwords before storing them [9].
- Caregiver
- A family member or other person who helps someone manage their medications. In DocStock, the account owner can invite a caregiver with view or edit access to specific profiles and revoke that access at any time.
- CI/CD
- Continuous integration and continuous deployment: automatically building and testing code each time changes are pushed, and deploying it once the tests pass. DocStock uses GitHub Actions for this.
- Dose schedule
- The list of specific dates and times each medication is due, generated from the prescription's frequency, such as twice daily or every 8 hours.
- Drug interaction
- A potentially unwanted effect that can occur when two or more medications interact with each other.
- Express.js
- A web framework for Node.js. DocStock uses it to build the backend API that the web and mobile apps communicate with.
- Grace window
- The time after a dose is due during which it can still be logged before DocStock marks it as missed, for example 60 minutes.
- GUI
- Graphical user interface: the screens, buttons, and other visual elements a person uses to interact with an application.
- Missed dose
- A scheduled dose that is not logged within its grace window. A caregiver can optionally be notified when one occurs.
- MySQL
- An open-source relational database. DocStock uses it to store users, medications, schedules, dose history, and supply data.
- Node.js
- A runtime that executes JavaScript on a server. DocStock's backend runs on Node.js.
- Nonadherence
- Failure to correctly follow a prescribed medication regimen.
- Prescription
- A medication ordered for a patient by a licensed provider.
- Prototype
- A limited, working version of DocStock built to demonstrate its main features using simulated users and data, as opposed to the full real-world product.
- Push notification
- A message an app sends to a device even when the app is not open. DocStock uses push notifications on mobile and browser notifications on the web [11].
- React Native
- A framework for building iOS and Android apps from a single JavaScript codebase. DocStock's mobile app is built with it.
- Refill alert
- A notification sent when a medication's remaining supply drops to a set threshold, for example 7 days, so the user can refill it before running out.
- RxNorm and RxCUI
- RxNorm is a standard naming system for clinical drugs maintained by the U.S. National Library of Medicine, and each drug in it has an identifier called an RxCUI. DocStock converts medication names to RxCUIs before screening for interactions [8].
- Supply tracking
- Keeping a running count of how much of each medication is left. Each logged dose subtracts from the count, and entering a refill resets it.
- TOTP
- Time-based one-time password: a short code, generated by an authenticator app, that changes every 30 seconds. It is used as the second step in two-step verification [10].
- Two-step verification
- Signing in with a password plus a second proof of identity, such as a one-time code. Also called multi-factor authentication. DocStock offers it as an optional security setting [6].
- UTC
- Coordinated Universal Time, the worldwide time standard. DocStock stores dose times in UTC and displays them in the user's local time zone.