Rougly half of patients do not take psychotropic drugs as prescribed, especially those in underserved communities, according to A:Care. To address this, a team of eight Ying Wu College of Computing undergraduate students created “Sidekick,” a mental-health side-effect tracker that earned third place at the 2025 Pfizer Digital Hackathon.
The app aids in making side effect tracking simple, reliable and accessible, with a goal of reducing medication dropout, improving adherence, empowering patients and promoting equity in health outcomes for all communities. The team cites many reasons for why patients may discontinue medication, including doubts in effectiveness, initial side effect periods, stigma about being on medication and not treating their symptoms to expectations, among others.
Sidekick’s initial build connects with wearables for symptom logging and alerts for changes in mood, sleep and physiological patterns. Additional smart alerts are pushed to patients and health care providers to flag risks and set dosage reminders. The objective, according to project manager Michelle Zambrano (computer science), is to assess symptoms through structured analysis while considering patient experiences. One of her own team members provided first-hand experience on how the device may have helped to avoid premature changes to their own regimen. To read the full story.