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Quill Medical

Quill Medical is a secure web platform that connects patients with their healthcare providers. It enables:

  • Secure messaging between patients and clinics
  • Clinical letter creation and delivery
  • Transparent pricing for clinical time and consultations
  • Safe storage of medical correspondence

The platform is designed for clinical reliability, security, and compliance with healthcare standards.

Tech Stack

Frontend

  • React 19 – Modern UI framework for building interactive interfaces
  • TypeScript – Type-safe JavaScript for reliable code
  • Mantine UI – comprehensive component library for React applications
  • Tabler Icons – Beautiful open-source icon set via @tabler/icons-react
  • React Router – Client-side routing and navigation
  • Vite – Fast build tool and development server
  • Vitest – Unit testing framework
  • Storybook – Component development and documentation

Backend

  • FastAPI – Modern Python web framework
  • SQLAlchemy – Database ORM and query builder
  • PostgreSQL – Relational database
  • Alembic – Database migration tool

Healthcare Standards

  • FHIR R4 – Patient demographics and healthcare data exchange
  • OpenEHR – Clinical document modeling and storage

How It Works

Quill Medical is built from several connected components:

  • Web application – What patients and staff see and use in their browsers
  • Web server – Handles secure connections and routes traffic
  • Application server – Processes requests and manages business logic
  • Databases – Store patient information, clinical letters, and user accounts
  • Healthcare standards – Uses FHIR for patient demographics and OpenEHR for clinical documents

Code Quality

The codebase uses automated tools to maintain consistent formatting and catch common errors:

  • Code formatters ensure consistent style
  • Linters check for potential issues
  • Spell checkers catch typos in documentation
  • Pre-commit checks run automatically before code is saved

Security & Authentication

User Authentication

  • Users log in with username and password
  • Passwords are encrypted and never stored in plain text
  • Sessions last 15 minutes, then automatically refresh
  • Optional two-factor authentication for extra security

Data Protection

  • All connections use HTTPS encryption
  • Protection against common web attacks
  • Secure session management with automatic expiry
  • User permissions control who can access what data

Permission-Based Access Control

Quill Medical uses a defence-in-depth security architecture:

  • Backend validation – All permissions checked server-side (source of truth)
  • Frontend protection – Hides inaccessible features for better user experience
  • Tiered security – Different user types receive appropriate error responses
  • Permission hierarchy – Patient → Staff → Admin → Superadmin
  • Fail-safe defaults – Access denied unless explicitly granted

This approach ensures:

  • Patients cannot access administrative features
  • Staff can only access assigned patients
  • Admins have appropriate oversight capabilities
  • All access attempts are logged for compliance

Database Management

  • Changes to database structure are tracked and versioned
  • Updates can be applied safely without data loss

Documentation

  • Python - Google style

Getting Started

For Developers

Required Software

  • Docker Desktop – runs the application in containers
  • Node.js 22+ – for frontend development
  • Python 3.13+ – for backend development
  • Yarn – JavaScript package manager
  • Just – command runner for common tasks

Setup Steps

  1. Download the code from the repository
  2. Create configuration files with secure passwords
  3. Build and start all services
  4. Initialise the development environment

Access Points

Pre-commit CI

This repository uses pre-commit to run formatters, linters and checks. The feature workflow (.github/workflows/feature.yml) runs pre-commit run --all-files as part of the Python styling checks.

To run the checks locally:

# install pre-commit (use your python environment / poetry if needed)
python -m pip install --upgrade pip
pip install pre-commit

# install hooks (optional, to run automatically on commit)
pre-commit install

# run all checks across the repository
pre-commit run --all-files