Challenge #1
Preventing double-bookings during concurrent scheduling requests
Solution
Introduced a short-lived slot hold at the start of checkout, backed by a database constraint, so two patients could never confirm the same appointment time.
Healthcare Appointment Platform
Client Work18 March 2025
A patient appointment platform that connects users with healthcare providers through an easy booking workflow.
NextTypeScriptPostgreSQLResend
The problem
Clinics needed a simpler way to manage appointments and reduce manual scheduling overhead. Phone-based booking led to double-bookings, missed calls and staff time spent on scheduling instead of patient care.
The solution
A production-ready booking platform focused on usability, reliability and secure patient workflows. Patients can search for available providers, book a time slot in real time and receive automated confirmations and reminders by email.
My role
Delivered the project as a contractor for the client, handling scheduling logic, authentication and email notifications end-to-end.
Key features
Appointment scheduling
Real-time availability search across providers, with automatic slot locking to prevent double-booking.
User authentication
Secure patient accounts with session management to protect personal health information.
Provider management
A staff-facing dashboard for providers to set availability, block time off and view upcoming appointments.
Email notifications
Automated booking confirmations and reminder emails, reducing missed appointments.
Technical decisions
Built reliable scheduling logic to prevent booking conflicts by locking a time slot for a short window during checkout, releasing it automatically if the booking was not completed.
Used Resend for transactional email so confirmations and reminders were delivered reliably without maintaining custom SMTP infrastructure.
Challenges & solutions
The interesting part wasn't just building the features. It was figuring out how to make them work reliably, efficiently, and at a scale that wouldn't compromise the experience.
Challenge #2
Keeping patient data secure while remaining easy for staff to use daily
Solution
Separated patient-facing and staff-facing authentication scopes and limited the provider dashboard to only the data needed for scheduling.
Outcome
The clinic reported a meaningful drop in scheduling errors and phone-based bookings after launch, with automated reminders cutting down on missed appointments.
- Reduced significantly
- Scheduling errors
- Down, via automated reminders
- Missed appointments
- Largely replaced by self-service
- Phone-based bookings
What I learned
A short-lived slot hold backed by a database constraint was a small piece of logic that eliminated the client’s single biggest source of scheduling complaints.
Keeping patient- and staff-facing authentication scopes strictly separate from the start made it much easier to reason about what data the provider dashboard actually needed to expose.
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