Nursing Home Cariari
A pro-bono care-management system that moved a non-profit elderly home off spreadsheets — later re-engineered on a stronger stack.
Role
Sole Engineer (volunteer / community project)
Industry
Healthcare · Non-profit
Timeline
v1 built pro-bono, later migrated to a modern stack
Stack
8 technologies
What this project is
This started as a university community-service project, built pro-bono for a non-profit home caring for elderly residents. Their records — personal information, medical conditions, prescriptions, and upcoming doctor's appointments — were kept in spreadsheets and handwritten notebooks. I built a system to manage all of it, and later migrated it to a more structured, better-practiced stack as my tooling matured.
Context
A non-profit elderly care home in Cariari, delivered as unpaid community-service work.
Main goal
Give caregivers a reliable, searchable system for resident records — replacing spreadsheets and notebooks.
The problem — and the value delivered
Written for owners and stakeholders: what was broken, why it mattered, and what changed.
The problem
Each resident's personal details, pathologies, prescriptions, and pending medical appointments were tracked across Excel and paper notebooks. That made information slow to find, easy to lose, and hard to keep current for people whose care depends on it.
Why it mattered
In elderly care, accurate, up-to-date records aren't paperwork — they directly affect residents' health and safety.
The solution
A web app with a searchable resident directory, a panel for pending medical appointments, prescription management, and each resident's full personal and medical profile — all in one place, always current.
Benefits delivered
- A single searchable source of truth for every resident.
- Pending medical appointments visible at a glance.
- Prescriptions and medical conditions managed digitally.
- Profile photos to quickly and correctly identify residents.
- Records that stay current, unlike scattered notebooks.
Pro-bono
Community-service project
Paper → Digital
Records off spreadsheets
Re-engineered
Firebase → PostgreSQL
Architecture & implementation
Written for developers and recruiters: the technical decisions, tradeoffs, and lessons.
Architecture
The first version was built with Vite, React, and JavaScript on a Firebase (Firestore) non-relational backend, and it met all the requirements. As AI tooling and my own practices improved, I re-engineered it toward a more structured design: TypeScript, a relational PostgreSQL database on Supabase, Supabase Auth, and Supabase Storage — the last of which added resident profile photos. The migration brought better structure, better practices, and a cleaner UI.
Frontend
- React
- TypeScript
- Vite
Backend (v2)
- Supabase
- PostgreSQL
- Supabase Auth
- Supabase Storage (S3)
Backend (v1)
- Firebase
- Firestore
- JavaScript
Implementation highlights
Searchable resident directory
A table with a search bar to find any resident and open their full personal and medical profile instantly.
Appointments panel
A dedicated view of pending medical appointments so nothing gets missed.
Firebase → Postgres migration
Re-platformed from a non-relational Firebase backend to a relational Supabase/PostgreSQL model with TypeScript and stronger practices.
Resident profile photos
Supabase Storage was introduced in v2 to attach profile photos for quick, correct identification.
Challenges
Re-platforming a live tool
Moving from Firestore's document model to a relational schema meant rethinking data relationships while preserving everything the home already relied on.
Building for non-technical caregivers
The UI had to be simple enough for staff with no technical background, which drove the cleaner v2 interface.
Lessons learned
- Revisiting real projects as your skills grow is one of the best ways to learn.
- Relational modeling paid off the moment the data had real relationships.
- Pro-bono work sharpens the same engineering judgment paid work demands.
What it does
Resident Search
Find any resident and open their profile.
Appointments
Track pending medical appointments.
Prescriptions
Manage medications and conditions.
Profile Photos
Identify residents at a glance.
Secure Access
Authenticated caregiver access.
Health Records
Personal and medical info in one place.
Full technology stack
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