QueueCare Healthcare Queue System

QueueCare is a dynamic, real-time queue management platform for clinics and hospitals designed to replace physical paper tokens with a live digital tracking experience. It keeps patients informed of their wait times and grants medical staff complete control over rooms, doctors, and patient queue priorities.

Built for ease of deployment, and high-performance real-time updates, QueueCare is 100% free-tier compatible and ready for instant cloud deployment.

---

🚀 Key Features

🏢 Receptionist & Staff Portal (Secured)

• Real-time Analytics Dashboard: Visualizes KPI counters (Patients Waiting, In Consultation, Completed, Active Doctors, Avg Wait Time) and renders hourly wait times, doctor loads, weekly volume, and room occupancy using Recharts.
• Patient Registration & Triage: Staff can register patients, assign them to specific doctors, write notes, and select priority levels (Normal, Senior Citizen, Emergency). Est. wait time and token are auto-generated.
• Drag-and-Drop Room Transfer: Effortlessly transfer patients between rooms or doctors with instant queue updates.
• Queue Reordering: Move patients up or down in the room queue to override standard FCFS/priority sorting.
• Dynamic Configurations: Update average consultation time, select token generation methods (sequential, random, alphabetic), toggle notifications (SMS, browser alerts), and manage bulk rooms and doctors.

👥 Patient Portal (Public)

• Token Tracking: Patients can search their token code (e.g. T-001) to view their live status:
  • Exact number of patients ahead of them.
  • Estimated waiting time in minutes (computed via the Wait-Time Engine).
  • Live status indicator (Waiting, In Queue, In Consultation, Completed).
• ♿ Accessibility Mode: Fully localized in English and Hindi.
  • High Contrast Dark Mode: Utilizes high-visibility dark themes with extra large text sizes.
  • Voice Announcements: Uses the browser's speech synthesis engine to announce when it is the patient's turn. ("ध्यान दें। टोकन नंबर T-001। कृपया कक्ष संख्या 1 में जाएँ।")

---

🛠 Tech Stack

• Frontend: React, TypeScript, Vite, TailwindCSS, TanStack React Query, Lucide Icons, Recharts, Socket.io-client.
• Backend: Node.js, Express.js, TypeScript, Prisma ORM, SQLite (local development) / PostgreSQL (production), JSON Web Tokens (JWT), Bcrypt.js, Socket.io.

---

⚙️ Environment Variables

Copy the .env.example templates to .env files for configuration.

Local Development Environment (Root folder .env)

VITE_API_URL=http://localhost:5000/api

Local Development Environment (Backend folder backend/.env)

PORT=5000
DATABASE_URL="file:./dev.db"
JWT_SECRET=super-secret-key-queuecare
FRONTEND_URL=http://localhost:5173

---

💻 Local Installation & Setup

Prerequisites

• Node.js (v18 or above recommended)
• npm or pnpm package manager

1. Backend Setup

Navigate to the backend directory, configure the database, and boot up the server:

# 1. Navigate to backend folder
cd backend

# 2. Install dependencies
npm install

# 3. Create the SQLite database and generate the Prisma Client
npx prisma db push

# 4. Seed the database with the professional demo dataset
npm run db:seed

# 5. Run the backend development server
npm run dev

The backend server runs on http://localhost:5000.

2. Frontend Setup

Open a new terminal window in the root directory:

# 1. Install frontend dependencies
npm install

# 2. Run the Vite development server
npm run dev

The frontend application runs on http://localhost:5173.

---

🔑 Default Login Credentials

Use the following credentials to access the receptionist and admin dashboards:

User Role	Email	Password	Access Rights
Receptionist	receptionist@clinic.com	password123	Registrations, Transfers, Toggles
Administrator	admin@clinic.com	admin123	Doctor & Room Configuration, Settings

---

📦 Cloud Deployment & PostgreSQL Migration

To deploy the application to cloud platforms (Vercel, Netlify, Render) and connect to a production-ready database (like Neon PostgreSQL), check out the complete guide in deployment.md.

It contains instructions on:

1. Prisma Provider Migration: Changing the database schema from SQLite to PostgreSQL compatibility.
2. Neon.tech Integration: Hosting a free PostgreSQL instance.
3. Web Service Hosting: Setting up Node.js server instances on Render with full Socket.IO compatibility.
4. Static Hosting: Deploying the frontend build folder to Vercel/Netlify.

---

🧪 Running Tests

Verify all APIs, queue workflows, skip functions, and auto-promotion constraints using the Jest test suite:

# Navigate to the backend directory
cd backend

# Run the Jest tests
npm test