Meridian — Intelligent Symptom-to-Specialist Care Routing

PeddieHacks 2026 — Health Track

"Know where to go, before it becomes urgent."
Meridian routes patients in plain language to the right medical specialist and urgency level. It routes; it never diagnoses.

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🌟 Key Features

1. Hybrid Intelligence (Gemini 3.6 Flash + Fail-Safe Engine):
   • ✨ Gemini 3.6 Flash AI: Uses natural language understanding to extract clinical indicators, suggest the appropriate specialist, evaluate urgency, and generate tailored questions to ask the doctor.
   • ⚡ Fail-Safe Deterministic Engine: Built-in 17-cluster weighted rule engine that runs 100% locally. If the API is missing, offline, or times out, Meridian seamlessly falls back to the deterministic engine without breaking mid-demo.
2. Emergency Override Banner:
   • Pinned high-contrast alerts for emergency queries.
   • Dedicated direct hotline routing to 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (call/text 24/7) and 911 for acute medical emergencies.
3. Transparent Explainability ("How Meridian Decided"):
   • Displays matched symptom indicators and clinical urgency definitions so clinicians and judges see exactly how recommendations are made.
4. Actionable Care Checklist:
   • 3-point next-steps guidance customized for each urgency level (Emergency, Soon, Routine, Monitor).
5. Tier 3 Accessibility & Tools:
   • 🎙️ Speech-to-Text Voice Input: Dictate symptoms using browser-native speech recognition.
   • 📍 Google Maps Specialist Finder: Pre-filled 1-click search for nearby providers.
   • 🌓 Dark / Light Theme: Toggle between Obsidian Dark and Clinical Light mode.
   • 🖨️ Print-to-PDF: Formats a clean clinical care summary card.
6. Local Session History:
   • Remembers recent checks with one-click reload/re-run via localStorage.

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📖 Model Selection & Story Note (Why Gemini 3.6 Flash)

For production deployment and live hackathon judging, Gemini 3.6 Flash is selected as our constant model. While bleeding-edge releases (such as Gemini 3.7 Flash) offer impressive capabilities, they frequently encounter global capacity spikes and rate limiting under live load. Gemini 3.6 Flash provides the optimal balance of clinical reasoning quality, sub-second latency, and rock-solid availability.

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🚀 Quick Start

1. Install Dependencies

npm install

2. Configure Gemini API Key

Configure your key in .env.local:

VITE_GEMINI_API_KEY=your_actual_gemini_api_key_here

(Or click "API Key" in the top navigation bar of the running application).

3. Run Development Server

npm run dev

Open http://localhost:3000 in your browser.

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🏗️ Architecture & Safety Model

User Plain Language Input
         │
    ┌────┴───────────────────────────┐
    ▼                                ▼
[ Gemini 3.6 Flash AI ]     [ Deterministic Rules Engine ]
 (Deep context + questions)  (17 clinical symptom clusters)
    │                                │
    └──────────────┬─────────────────┘
                   ▼
       Structured Care Routing Card
       • Recommended Specialist
       • Urgency Level (Emergency | Soon | Routine | Monitor)
       • Matched Clinical Indicators
       • 3-Step Action Checklist
       • Tailored Questions for Doctor
       • Non-Diagnostic Safety Notice

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🛡️ Medical Disclaimer

Meridian is an educational care-routing system designed to guide patients toward appropriate medical care. It does not provide medical diagnoses, treatment plans, or prescriptions. In a medical emergency, always call 911 or your local emergency services immediately.