Healthcare · Web App · Supabase
A private recovery companion for every patient, branded to the practice.
Pennington Facial Plastics needed a way to guide patients through the most anxious weeks of their lives without constant phone calls to the front desk. We built a full web app: day-by-day recovery timeline, caregiver tools, medication and supplement guides, mood journaling, and a Supabase backend.
The problem we were solving
Post-operative recovery from facial plastic surgery is medically straightforward but emotionally complex. Patients go home with paper instruction sheets, a prescription bag, and a phone number. In the days that follow, they search their symptoms on Reddit at 2 a.m., forget which supplements they were supposed to stop, and call the office for reassurance that normal swelling is normal swelling.
For Dr. Pennington's practice, this created two friction points: staff time spent on reassurance calls that should not require a nurse, and patients who felt unsupported between appointments. The goal was to change both without adding complexity to the clinical workflow.
What we built
A fully custom progressive web app (PWA) that patients receive access to after booking their procedure. It installs on iOS and Android like a native app, remembers their surgery date, and becomes their day-by-day companion from pre-op preparation through full recovery.
The app knows where a patient is in their recovery arc and surfaces only what is relevant for that day. Day 3 content is different from Day 14 content. Pre-op content disappears once surgery has passed. Every screen was written for the emotional register of someone who just had surgery on their face.
"A patient who feels supported between appointments is a patient who trusts their doctor."
Key features
Day-by-day recovery timeline
The timeline is the heart of the app. Each day has a named phase (Pre-Op, Day of Surgery, Early Recovery, Healing Phase, and so on), a short description written in plain language, and a focused task list. A progress bar visualizes the full arc from surgery to full recovery. Patients are never left guessing whether what they are experiencing is normal.
Dedicated caregiver view
A separate mode built for the person helping the patient. The caregiver sees today's care tasks translated into action-oriented language, a medication schedule with log buttons, a pain scale tracker, PRN (as-needed) dose logging, and a notes field for anything to mention at the follow-up appointment. It is a clinical tool simplified for a non-clinical user.
Supplement and medication guides
Expandable cards organized into "Stop Before Surgery" and "Safe to Continue" categories, with searchable lists. Every entry includes the reasoning in plain language: why fish oil increases bleeding risk, why arnica is recommended three days before surgery. Patients stop calling to ask because the answer is already in their pocket.
Aftercare and FAQ
Wound care, sleep positioning, activity restrictions, diet guidance, and a full "what is normal vs. call the office" section. The FAQ is categorized by phase (Before Surgery, After Surgery, Recovery and Healing) and is fully searchable. Written in the same calm, confident voice as Dr. Pennington uses with patients in person.
Daily reflection and mood tracking
An optional journaling screen where patients can log their mood and write a private note. Not clinical, but genuinely useful: recovery from elective cosmetic surgery involves a well-documented emotional dip around days 3 to 7, and having a place to name that experience helps patients normalize it.
Progress photos and contact
A progress photo module lets patients document healing week by week. The contact screen surfaces the office number prominently, alongside a direct text option and office hours, so patients always know exactly how to reach the team.
The stack
Supabase for authentication and data storage. Vanilla JavaScript with no framework overhead. Playfair Display and Raleway for the warm, clinical-luxury typographic voice. PWA manifest so it installs to the home screen without an app store. Hosted on Vercel.
No dependencies that can break. No version upgrade cycles. Just a fast, reliable web app that works on every device a patient might use in a recovery room.
Why this matters beyond this client
Most medical practices run patient education on PDFs and hope for the best. A structured, day-aware recovery app is not a luxury for a high-end surgical practice. It is a differentiator in a market where patients research their surgeon as carefully as they research their procedure.
The same architecture applies to any procedure with a defined recovery arc: rhinoplasty, blepharoplasty, body contouring, orthopedic surgery. The content changes. The system does not. This is exactly the kind of build that becomes a product.
Your practice could be next
Patient experience is a product decision.
15-minute call. We'll tell you exactly what we'd build for your specialty and timeline.