Northwind Health
Patient intake, rebuilt from scratch
Replaced a legacy intake workflow with a Next.js app and a Swift companion for clinicians. Shipped in eight weeks; cut intake time per patient from 22 minutes to under 6.
Role
Lead engineer & product designer
Duration
8 weeks
Team
Solo + 2 clinical SMEs
Year
2025
Dashboard overview
Placeholder · 16/9
−73%
Intake time
+340
Daily patients
120
Clinician hours saved / wk
8 wks
Time to ship
The problem
Northwind's intake process ran on a 15-year-old ASP.NET form bolted to a paper workflow. Clinicians spent 22 minutes per patient toggling between five screens; new staff took weeks to onboard. The legacy vendor had stopped responding to bug reports.
The approach
Spent the first week shadowing intake nurses on-site to map the real workflow, not the documented one. Rebuilt the experience as a single-page Next.js app with a Swift companion for tablet-based room check-ins, backed by a Postgres-on-AWS stack with a strict audit trail for HIPAA compliance. Cut the form from 47 fields to 11 by asking which data was actually used downstream.
The outcome
Shipped to one clinic in week 6, rolled out to all five locations by week 8. Intake time dropped from 22 minutes to under 6. New-staff ramp time dropped from 3 weeks to 4 days. Six months on, the system handles 340 more patients per day with the same headcount.
A look inside.
Intake form
Placeholder · 16/9
Audit trail view
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Tablet check-in (Swift companion)
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Stack used
“We didn't just get faster — we got our evenings back. The old system was eating an hour of after-hours admin per nurse per day. This pays for itself every quarter.”
Dr. Marcia Holt
Director of Operations, Northwind Health