How One Student Is Simplifying Healthcare with Just One App: Petit Medicare by Nicky
Sigma School
6th April 2025
At Sigma School, our students don't just learn to code - they build solutions to real-world problems. Meet Nicky, a former software engineering intern with a passion for making healthcare more accessible. Like many of us, Nicky has spent hours in hospital waiting rooms, frustrated by long queues, unnecessary visits, and the hassle of managing appointments. But unlike most, she decided to turn that frustration into a tech solution.
Her capstone project, Petit Medicare, is a healthcare appointment booking system designed to eliminate long wait times, streamline patient-doctor interactions, and deliver reports digitally - making the healthcare experience smoother for everyone involved.
Nicky’s motivation was personal. As someone who had struggled with long hospital queues and repeated trips just to collect medical reports, she realized this wasn’t just her issue—it was a widespread pain point.
The problems she observed were:
These real-life observations laid the foundation for Petit Medicare—a system aimed at helping patients book, reschedule, and manage medical appointments online while also receiving their reports digitally.
Nicky created Petit Medicare with both patients and doctors in mind. The platform has two separate interfaces:
Nicky created Petit Medicare with both patients and doctors in mind. The platform has two separate interfaces:
"Designing from scratch helped me deeply understand how frontend components work together," Nicky shared.
Nicky used EmailJS, a serverless tool, to send automated email notifications. This allowed her to integrate email functionality without needing backend coding, ensuring fast and easy communication between patients and doctors.
Firebase streamlined the backend and saved time on server setup.
Nicky designed the app with both desktop and mobile views for patients and doctors, ensuring accessibility across devices.
One of the toughest moments in Nicky’s development journey was integrating an external API for email notifications. Initially, she tried using a complex external email API that didn’t work as expected. The integration process caused delays and a lot of frustration.
But Nicky didn’t give up.
Instead, she sought help during group office hours, which helped her quickly identify the issue. In the end, she switched to EmailJS—an external tool that allows sending emails without server-side coding. This decision saved her time and ensured the app could still deliver automated notifications when a doctor uploaded a report.
Throughout the capstone journey, Nicky gained more than just technical skills. She learned how to design complex systems, build frontend features, integrate APIs, and work independently through real development challenges. She also gathered feedback to improve her UI and landing page, making the app more engaging and user-friendly.
"Through this project, I really improved my confidence in handling complicated projects independently," she shared.
And she’s not stopping here. For future enhancements, Nicky is looking to integrate:
Nicky’s Petit Medicare isn’t just another student project. It’s a practical tool that can improve lives - especially for people who have busy schedules, limited mobility, or live far from healthcare facilities. By offering digital appointments and instant access to reports, she’s created a system that modernizes healthcare experiences for both patients and doctors.
At Sigma School, we’re incredibly proud of students like Nicky who take initiative, solve real problems, and build with purpose.