Project Overview
| Client Industry | Health & Wellness / Technology Startup (Telehealth) |
| Business Type | Pre-seed startup, two co-founders, no in-house engineering team |
| Project Duration | 9 weeks |
| AI Service Provided | MVP Development |
| Technologies Used | React, Next.js, TypeScript, Node.js, PostgreSQL, AWS (Amplify, RDS, S3), Twilio Video, Stripe |
The Client Challenge
Two co-founders a nurse practitioner and a former healthcare operations manager had a clear idea for a telehealth scheduling platform connecting patients with independent physical therapists for virtual consultations. What they didn’t have was a technical team, a working product or the funding to build one properly.
Their situation and constraints:
- Neither founder had a technical background, and they’d received conflicting advice from freelancers about what to build first.
- They needed a working product to show investors within roughly two months, ahead of a seed funding pitch cycle they didn’t want to miss.
- Budget was limited this needed to be a focused, validate-the-concept build not a fully-featured platform.
- They weren’t certain which features actually mattered to patients and therapists versus which were “nice to have,” and risked spending their limited budget building the wrong things.
- HIPAA-adjacent handling of patient information meant even an MVP couldn’t cut corners on basic data privacy and security practices.
- A prior freelancer engagement had produced a half-built prototype that didn’t work reliably and had to be scrapped, costing them time and trust in outside developers.
They needed a partner who could turn a business idea into a working, demoable product quickly while making smart scope decisions on their behalf, since they didn’t have the technical background to make those calls themselves.
Our Solution
Air Brite Labs ran a focused discovery process to define the smallest product that could prove the core hypothesis that patients would book and complete virtual PT consultations through a simple, trustworthy scheduling platform and built exactly that, nothing more.
Rather than building every feature the founders initially listed, we worked with them to identify the three core workflows that actually needed to exist for a real pilot: patient booking, therapist scheduling management and secure video consultation.
Key capabilities delivered in the MVP:
- Patient booking flow — browse available therapists, view specialties and availability, and book a consultation in a few clicks.
- Therapist scheduling dashboard — a simple interface for independent therapists to set availability and manage upcoming appointments.
- Secure video consultations — integrated video calling for the actual PT session, built directly into the platform rather than redirecting to a third-party tool.
- Payment processing — patients pay at time of booking, with automatic payout tracking for therapists.
- Basic intake forms — a lightweight pre-appointment questionnaire so therapists have context before each session.
Deliberately excluded from this phase: insurance billing integration, a native mobile app, and multi-provider practice management all flagged as V1 candidates once the core concept was validated.
Technical Approach
Frontend
Built with Next.js and TypeScript for a fast, SEO-friendly patient-facing booking experience, using React for the therapist dashboard.
Backend
Node.js API layer handling booking logic, scheduling conflicts, and payment orchestration, with PostgreSQL as the primary data store for appointments, users, and therapist availability.
Video Consultations
Integrated Twilio Video’s SDK directly into the platform rather than building custom WebRTC infrastructure the right trade-off for an MVP timeline, since it delivered reliable video without months of infrastructure work.
Payments
Stripe Connect handled patient payments and therapist payouts, chosen specifically because it supports the marketplace style payment splitting the business model required without custom financial infrastructure.
Infrastructure
Deployed on AWS using Amplify for frontend hosting and CI/CD, RDS for the managed PostgreSQL database, and S3 for secure storage of intake form data.
Security Considerations
Even at MVP stage, patient data was encrypted, access was role-restricted, and video sessions used Twilio’s encrypted infrastructure, creating a secure baseline from day one.
Implementation Process
- Discovery & Requirement Analysis (Weeks 1–2): Ran structured discovery sessions with both founders to separate “must exist to test the hypothesis” from “would be nice eventually,” resulting in a tightly scoped feature list both founders actually agreed on.
- Prototype / PoC (Week 3): Built clickable wireframes for the booking and therapist dashboard flows, validated with five prospective therapists the founders had already been in conversation with.
- Development (Weeks 4–7): Built the booking flow, therapist dashboard, video integration, and payment processing in parallel workstreams.
- Integration (Week 7): Connected Stripe Connect and Twilio Video, tested end-to-end booking-to-consultation flow.
- Testing (Week 8): Ran a closed pilot with 3 therapists and 15 real patients recruited by the founders, fixing usability issues surfaced during real bookings.
- Deployment (Week 9): Launched publicly on a limited basis in the founders’ initial target city, ready for the investor pitch deadline.
- Optimization (ongoing post-launch): Provided a lightweight support retainer to fix issues and make small adjustments based on early user feedback after launch.
Key Features Delivered
- Patient-facing therapist search and booking flow
- Therapist availability and appointment management dashboard
- Integrated secure video consultation (no third-party redirect)
- Stripe Connect-based payment processing with therapist payouts
- Pre-appointment patient intake forms
- Role-based access control protecting patient data
- Mobile-responsive design usable on phone or desktop without a native app
Business Results
- The MVP was live and demoable within 9 weeks, meeting the founders’ investor pitch deadline
- The closed pilot completed 40+ real virtual consultations in the first three weeks post-launch, providing real usage data for the investor pitch
- The founders successfully closed their seed round, citing the working product and real booking data as a key factor in investor confidence
- Patient booking completion rate in the pilot reached 78%, validating that the simplified booking flow removed friction rather than adding it
- Therapist onboarding time averaged under 10 minutes, confirming the scheduling dashboard was usable without training or support calls
- Total development cost stayed within the founders’ budget by scoping tightly to the three core workflows instead of building every requested feature
Technology Stack
| Layer | Technology |
|---|---|
| Frontend | React, Next.js, TypeScript |
| Backend | Node.js |
| Database | PostgreSQL |
| Video | Twilio Video |
| Payments | Stripe Connect |
| Cloud Infrastructure | AWS Amplify, RDS, S3 |
Why the Solution Worked
The MVP succeeded because scope discipline was treated as a deliverable, not a constraint to work around. The founders came in with a much longer feature wishlist, and the most valuable thing we did in discovery was help them see which three workflows actually needed to exist to test their core hypothesis — everything else could wait.
Building a security baseline into even the MVP, rather than treating it as a “we’ll add that later” item, also mattered: healthcare-adjacent products can’t easily retrofit data protection after real patient information is already flowing through the system. Getting that right from the start avoided a costly rebuild down the line.
Future Scalability
With the seed round closed, the founders are now planning the platform’s V1 phase, which the MVP’s architecture is positioned to support:
- Insurance billing integration, deliberately excluded from MVP scope to keep the initial build fast and focused
- A native mobile app, building on the same Node.js backend already powering the web experience
- Multi-provider practice management for therapy groups rather than only independent practitioners
- Expanded specialties beyond physical therapy, using the same booking and video infrastructure
Because the MVP was built on standard, well-supported technologies (Next.js, Node.js, PostgreSQL) rather than shortcuts that would need to be un-done, the V1 phase extends this foundation rather than replacing it.
Final Outcome
What started as an idea on a whiteboard became a working, revenue-generating product in nine weeks — with real usage data and a closed pilot behind it by the time the founders walked into their investor pitch. The disciplined MVP scope didn’t just save budget; it gave the founders something far more valuable than a feature-complete product: proof that patients and therapists actually wanted what they were building.
