- Offline-first field systems
- Digital health
Consultare
API and back-office for the Consultare first-aid app, designed to work offline.
- Period
- 2019–2021
- Status
- In production
- Role
- Lead developer of the backend and back-office
- Client
- EQUIP Moçambique
- Partners
- Associação Empoderando Moçambique
Problem
For common household accidents (bites, burns, injuries, poisoning) reliable first-aid information is scarce, and often there is no internet. The app needed structured medical content that stays available on the phone offline.
Solution
I built the JSON API used by the mobile app and the web app: categories, incidents with symptoms, step-by-step treatments and prevention, featured items and public-health information. The Blade back-office lets the content team manage all of it, reorder steps and publish or unpublish without deleting. The mobile and web apps were built by the team.
Technical decisions
01
One route that returns all content for local storage
`incidentes/all` returns the full content in a single request, so the app can store it and work without a network.
02
SVG icons embedded as Base64 in the JSON
Category and featured-item icons travel inside the response, enabling a downloadable "icon pack" and offline illustrations.
03
"Last updated" endpoint
The app asks for the last change date and only re-syncs when there is new content.
04
Prevention tips linked to many incidents (N:M)
A pivot table avoids duplicating the same prevention tip for every incident.
05
Active/inactive flag instead of deletion
Categories and incidents can be removed from the app without losing reviewed content.
Images
01 / 06 — Consultare home page with three phones showing incident categories and a step-by-step treatment
Technologies
- Laravel
- PHP
- MySQL
- JavaScript
- Bootstrap
- Azure DevOps
Verifiable results
- incidents in the back-office (80 active)
- 158
- icons uploaded
- 366
What I learned
Designing an API for an offline app: a full payload, embedded assets and an update date to decide when to sync.
SDGs
SDG 3 · Good Health and Well-beingprimary
Structured first-aid information — symptoms, step-by-step treatments and prevention — available on the phone even without internet, for household accidents and common diseases.