Healthcare booking made simple for patients and clinics
Year
2023
2025
Industry
HealthTech
About the project
DocBay is a two-sided healthcare marketplace that helps patients easily find clinics and doctors and book appointments, while giving clinics and doctors convenient tools to manage their schedules — all through dedicated web and mobile applications. The platform also supports teleconsultations through an integrated video calling solution, so care isn't limited to in-person visits. Launched first in Portugal, the platform later expanded to the French market as well.
Patients can book and manage appointments, have teleconsultations with doctors, and subscribe to a doctor for continuous healthcare support. Clinics can manage their doctors, who in turn book and manage appointments, run teleconsultations, and offer subscription-based care to their patients. A dedicated admin panel gives DocBay's stakeholders visibility into the platform's business performance.
Product Management
UI/UX design
Development
Problem
DocBay needed to give patients in Portugal a fast, simple way to find and book the right doctor—without relying on phone calls, walk-ins, or scattered clinic directories. At the same time, clinics and doctors needed a better way to manage their day-to-day operations.
Before DocBay existed, both sides faced significant challenges:
Fragmented booking process. Patients had no centralized way to discover clinics and doctors and book an appointment—booking typically meant calling around or visiting in person.
No way to find care nearby. Without location-based search, patients had no simple way to find doctors closest to home, work, or wherever they needed care.ʼ
Care limited to in-person visits. Without a teleconsultation option, patients and doctors had no way to connect remotely, making healthcare access slower and less flexible.
Manual agenda management for clinics and doctors. Clinics and doctors had no dedicated tool to manage bookings, availability, and patient consultations in one place—day-to-day scheduling relied on manual coordination.
Our process
We partnered with DocBay to build a two-sided healthcare marketplace connecting patients with clinics and doctors, following our proven Product Ladder model.
STEP 01
MVP: validated the product with a focused first version
We ran a Discovery phase — gathering requirements, analyzing competitors, and scoping the MVP — then shaped the product idea, defined the architecture for a two-sided marketplace, and designed the interface for both sides.
STEP 02
Product foundation: build a stable, scalable platform
Our engineering team built a scalable SaaS platform with web and mobile apps for patients and clinics, plus an admin panel, with AWS-based architecture built for growth from day one. The platform launched first in Portugal, then expanded to the French market on the same foundation, without needing a rework.
What we built
01
Clinic & doctor apps (web & mobile)
Doctors and clinics manage their agenda, bookings, and availability in one place, with real-time notifications when a patient books or changes an appointment. Integrated video and text chat let doctors run consultations remotely, without needing the patient in the clinic, and clinics can offer patients subscription-based, continuous care.
02
Patient website & mobile app
Patients can search for clinics and doctors, book and manage appointments, and have teleconsultations without leaving home. A Mapbox integration helps them find doctors closest to home, work, or wherever they need care, and Stripe payments make paying for consultations and subscriptions simple. Patients can also subscribe to a doctor for continuous healthcare support.
03
Admin panel
DocBay's stakeholders get a dedicated panel to track the platform's business performance across both sides of the marketplace.
04
HR department program
Companies can register and buy DocBox credits, giving employees access to medical consultations. Employees use the credits to subscribe to doctors on DocBox, and companies can also set up tailored subscriptions with specific doctors for broader team healthcare benefits.
05
Backend & infrastructure
The backend is built with Node.js (TypeScript, TypeORM) and PostgreSQL, running on AWS (ECS, RDS, S3, SNS) for predictable, robust scaling as the user base grows. Sendgrid handles email notifications alongside the in-app notification system, while Twilio powers the video and text consultations between patients and doctors. The architecture was built with scalability in mind from the very beginning.
Results
DocBay turned a fragmented, phone-and-directory-based process into a single marketplace where patients can find, book, and consult with doctors in a few taps — and where clinics and doctors can manage their entire practice in one place.
By combining location-based search, integrated video consultations, and simple subscription-based payments, DocBay made continuous healthcare support accessible without requiring an in-person visit for every interaction. The AWS-based architecture, built for scalability from day one, gave DocBay a platform ready to grow without rework, while the dedicated admin panel gave stakeholders clear visibility into the business as it scaled. Beyond individual patients, the DocBox program extended that access further, letting companies offer their employees direct, credit-based access to medical consultations.
Building a two-sided marketplace meant designing and building for two very different users at once — patients and clinics — while keeping both experiences connected under one platform. Our team stayed involved from the initial Discovery phase through architecture, design, and engineering, working closely with DocBay to keep every decision aligned with what patients and doctors actually needed.
Given the platform's reliance on location search, video consultations, and secure payments, we chose a technology stack built to support real-time, scalable healthcare delivery.
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