Docal - Healthcare Workflow Experiment
An early technical experiment in structured clinic workflows.
Docal was an early personal technical experiment from around 2023. I used it to explore how a clinic-management interface could handle different roles, structured records, appointments, visits, diagnoses, prescriptions, images, and statistics. It was not a deployed clinic product.
Exploring data-heavy clinical workflows
The prototype includes separate views for clinic administration, doctors, and patients. I used those roles to explore how access to schedules, records, forms, and reporting might be organised when there is a large amount of connected information.
Structured information instead of inconsistent free text
One of the more interesting experiments was structured diagnosis data. Rather than relying only on manually typed diagnosis names, I explored a WHO ICD lookup so that names could be selected from a standardised source. That makes later search, filtering, and statistics more consistent.
- Schedules, appointments, and role-specific dashboard views
- Structured patient, visit, and prescription data models
- Search, filters, diagnosis and visit-detail forms
- WHO ICD lookup for standardised diagnosis naming
- PDF document generation experiments
- Image upload and annotation experiments for clinical imagery
One of the prototype views used to explore appointment and schedule handling.
A data-dense interface experiment for navigating records and visit information.
Documents and visual annotation
I also explored printable documents and an image-annotation workflow for uploaded X-rays or photos. These were experiments in interface and data handling, not claims of a production medical-record workflow. A medication-data integration is not presented here because the available source does not verify one clearly.
An interface experiment for communication within the wider workflow.
A prototype prescription and document-generation view.
What remained experimental
Several areas, including messaging and patient-side flows, were unfinished explorations. Docal remains a case study because it was useful for learning how to model interconnected workflows and build interfaces around structured information, not because it became a clinic system in use.
Unfinished communication-flow exploration.
Prototype tools for navigating a doctor-facing workflow.
Visit and diagnosis form experiment.
WHO ICD lookup used to explore standardised diagnosis naming.
Statistics interface based on the prototype's structured data.
Image upload and annotation experiment.
Technical overview:
- React 18 and Material UI
- Node.js and Express
- MongoDB with Mongoose
- JWT-based application authentication
- AWS S3 file handling
- WHO ICD lookup
- PDF generation and Fabric-based image annotation
- Recharts for prototype statistics