vaishnavi

Queue-Cure

"76% of India's 1.5 million clinics still rely on paper token slips and verbal calling. Patients wait 2–3 hours with zero visibility into their position in line, doctors have no real-time dashboard, and receptionists track everything from memory — leading to confusion, overcrowding, and missed turns." If you need a shorter version for a tighter character limit: Short version: "76% of India's 1.5M clinics run on paper tokens and shouting — patients wait 2–3 hours with no visibility, and receptionists manage queues from memory." One-sentence version: "Indian clinics rely on paper tokens and verb Indian clinics run queues on paper tokens and shouting — patients wait 2-3 hours with zero visibility, receptionists track everything from memory. I scoped this to the two screens that matter: a receptionist dashboard and a patient waiting-room display, synced live. I chose Node.js + Express + Socket.IO + SQLite — lightweight, beginner-friendly, zero external services needed. The hardest decision was concurrency: two rapid "Call Next" clicks could call the same patient twice. I solved this by wrapping the call-next logic in one SQLite transaction, so the database itself serializes the race instead of relying on frontend debouncing. For wait time, I avoided hardcoding it — the server averages the real duration of the last 10 completed consultations, falling back to a manual estimate only Tested locally and on the deployed version (Render backend + Vercel frontend): clicking "Call Next" on the receptionist screen updates the patient waiting-room screen in well under a second, with no manual refresh needed. Verified concurrency safety by simulating rapid double-clicks on "Call Next" — confirmed two different patients get called, not the same one twice, since SQLite's transaction serializes the operation. Verified the average consult time automatically switches from "manual" to "computed" once 2+ real consultations finish, with the source clearly labeled on both screens. I'd add multi-doctor/multi-room support — right now there's a single "now serving" slot, but real clinics often run 2-3 doctors in parallel. I'd also add SMS/WhatsApp pings for patients a couple tokens away instead of requiring them to watch a screen, and an audit log so receptionist actions are individually attributable instead of sharing one PIN.