Professional Project
Lyfsum
Overview
Lyfsum is a healthcare appointment booking platform connecting patients with medical providers. I built the full-stack system — patient search and discovery, doctor availability, payment processing, and appointment management — for a healthcare startup aiming to simplify how people access medical care.
Role
Full Stack Developer at Designare Solutions
Problem
Healthcare appointment scheduling is fragmented: patients call multiple clinics, face hold times, and still end up with inconvenient slots. The startup needed a unified platform where patients could search for providers by specialty, view real-time availability, and confirm bookings in a single flow — without requiring heavy infrastructure investment.
Solution
Built a React web app with provider search, filtering by specialty and location, and a calendar-based slot picker, utilizing Firebase for seamless user authentication. To reduce friction, I integrated a conversational booking flow and automated confirmations via WhatsApp using the Facebook API. The Node.js backend handled appointment state management with PostgreSQL, while PhonePe was integrated to securely process patient payments.
Architecture
A React SPA for the patient-facing web experience, Firebase for authentication, a Node.js REST API for appointment and provider management, and PostgreSQL on GCP Cloud SQL for relational healthcare data. Extended reach via WhatsApp Business API and handled financial transactions through PhonePe.
Key Design Decisions
- Provider search with specialty, location, and availability filters using parameterised SQL queries
- Firebase Authentication integration for secure and frictionless user onboarding
- Maintained a centralized Postman workspace documenting the entire REST API ecosystem to ensure seamless integration and testing
- WhatsApp Business API integration via Facebook for conversational booking and real-time confirmation notifications
- PhonePe payment gateway integration for secure transaction processing
- Slot availability engine supporting recurring schedules with override/exception windows
- Appointment state machine (requested → confirmed → completed / cancelled) enforced at the API layer
- Role-aware API: patients and providers have distinct access scopes via JWT claims
- PostgreSQL on GCP Cloud SQL for managed, HIPAA-considerate data storage
Challenges
- Modeling provider availability windows that support recurring schedules, exceptions, and real-time slot blocking
- Synchronizing appointment states concurrently between the web app and the WhatsApp conversational flow
- Handling asynchronous payment webhooks from PhonePe reliably to prevent double-booking or dropped transactions
- Designing a data model that could accommodate multiple provider types without schema migrations per type
Impact
- Delivered a production-ready healthcare booking platform from design to deployment
- Increased patient accessibility and engagement by enabling frictionless booking and instant confirmations directly through WhatsApp
- Eliminated phone-based scheduling friction for patients through a self-serve web and chat booking flow
- Supported multiple provider types and specialties under a unified data model with no schema rework