Shoreline youth create app to help seniors take medications accurately and safely

MediGuard Health.app

A team of young Shoreline residents, inspired by a grandmother with dementia, have created an app they call MediGuard to help seniors take medications safely.

With funding from awards and grants, the MediGuard app is now available on Google Play. 

Project Leader Palash Desarda tells his story

My grandmother has dementia. She takes several medications every day, prescribed by different doctors and filled at different pharmacies. Some days she couldn't remember whether she had already taken her pills. Other days she wasn't sure what each one was for. Our family worried constantly, but there was no easy way for us to check.

I knew she wasn't the only one. Many seniors manage a long list of medications on their own, and their families often have no idea when a dose is missed. So my friends and I decided to do something about it.

The MediGuard Team with one of their awards
L-R: Aaryaman Chopra, Andy Peng, Ethan De Guzman, Palash Desarda.

Together with my teammates, Siddharth Vasudeva and Ethan De Guzman, I started building MediGuard, an app that helps seniors take their medications safely and keeps their families and doctors in the loop. We attend International School in Bellevue, and our team is based in Shoreline.

With MediGuard, you scan a pill bottle label with your phone camera, and the app sets up reminders automatically. It explains each medication in plain, everyday language, so you know what you're taking and why. 

Scan the labels, type them in, or connect your MyChart to bring your record in. MediGuard builds your schedule.

It checks new medications against your other medications and allergies, and it can read lab reports and flag results that need a doctor's attention. With the patient's permission, family members and doctors can see whether doses were taken.

Optional clip-on device attaches to pill bottles to remind when a dose is due
and record when the bottle is opened.

We also built a small clip-on device that attaches to the pill bottle. It reminds you when a dose is due and records when the bottle is opened, so families know the medicine was actually taken. For someone like my grandmother, that peace of mind means a lot.

Over the past year, our project has earned a prize in the 2026 U.S. National Innovator Challenge, and we've won $7,500 in funding and several coding competitions to keep building.

We also want to learn directly from the people we're building for. On November 13, 2026, we'll lead a free "Know Your Medicines" session at the Lake City Senior Center, where we'll help older adults read pill bottle labels, understand common abbreviations, and share tips for remembering their daily doses.

Our goal is simple: no senior should have to remember everything on their own, and no family should have to wonder if their loved one took their medicine.

You can learn more here