Person-centred care for dementia patients (backend system development)

Abstract

With the rising prevalence of dementia amid an aging population, effective digital healthcare solutions are crucial. The Person-Centered Care (PEAR) system addresses this need by providing caregivers and healthcare professionals with robust, integrated tools for patient management and monitoring. Central to this iteration of the PEAR project is the migration from a legacy monolithic .NET architecture to a scalable microservice design. The author focused significantly on designing and implementing the Patient and Logger microservices. These microservices improve maintainability, scalability, and performance by clearly defining domain-specific functionalities. Challenges were encountered in disentangling the tightly coupled legacy codebase, necessitating meticulous analysis and strategic database restructuring. Additionally, a comprehensive logging solution was developed using Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Filebeat (ELK stack), providing efficient log aggregation, indexing, and retrieval. In parallel, the author spearheaded the redevelopment of the web frontend, transitioning it from outdated HTML/CSS and JavaScript embedded within the C# monolithic structure to a modern, modular stack leveraging Next.js, Shadcn, and TypeScript. This transition introduced enhanced maintainability, clarity in separation of concerns, and robust unit testing frameworks to validate frontend components. Further contributions included the establishment of Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines utilizing GitHub Actions, Docker, and Kubernetes. This automation streamlined development processes, enforced best coding practices, and ensured reliable deployment with minimal manual intervention. Collectively, these advancements lay a solid foundation for future expansions of the PEAR system, significantly enhancing its reliability, scalability, and maintainability.