Sonu Kumawat
Featured project
FlowCare: Real-Time Smart OPD & Queue System
Visit any local clinic and you'll see the chaos: patients constantly asking "Mera number kab aayega?" and receptionists shouting out names. In a typical OPD handling 50+ patients daily, staff wastes almost 30% of their time just managing the crowd and answering queue queries. The pain point is clear: lack of queue transparency leads to patient anxiety and staff burnout. Existing solutions are either too expensive or require complex hardware. Clinics needed a simple, software-first approach. We started by mapping the user journey at a local clinic. Initially, we thought about building a mobile app for patients to track their tokens. But we quickly realized that forcing an anxious patient to download an app just for a queue creates friction. So, we pivoted to a zero-barrier web-based TV display model. For the backend, the biggest challenge was real-time syncing. We first tried standard HTTP polling (fetching data every 5 seconds), but it was laggy and overloaded the server. We then scrapped polling and switched to Socket.io for a persistent WebSocket connection. This instantly fixed the delay and made the TV display update instantly. The system now handles queue updates with sub-second latency. By using WebSockets, we completely eliminated the need for manual screen refreshes on the TV display. During our simulated load tests, FlowCare handled rapid token updates across multiple connected screens without dropping a single connection. The UI provides clear transparency, which practically reduces the reception desk's verbal queries to zero. The project is fully deployed on Render and Vercel, ready for clinic use. If I had more time, I would focus heavily on offline resilience. Right now, if the clinic's internet drops, the WebSocket disconnects. I'd add local state caching using service workers so the receptionist can keep assigning tokens offline, which would then batch-sync to the cloud and TV display automatically once the connection is restored. I'd also love to integrate a simple WhatsApp API to ping patients when they are 2 slots away.