Tidewell - Flutter doctor appointment app with live wait

Clinic visits that run on real time

Tidewell is a doctor appointment system built around one idea: tell patients the real wait before they leave home. It ships a patient app and a doctor app (Flutter, iOS and Android, one codebase), a Laravel REST API and a clinic console (web admin panel). When a doctor runs late, one tap gives every waiting patient their new time and a new time to leave.

Demo Instructions

Live demo: tidewell.webkodingtheme.com
Clinic console: tidewell.webkodingtheme.com/admin – email: admin@tidewell.dev; password: TidewellAdmin! (read-only)
Product tour (1 min): youtu.be/1_Fwqrd7R1g
Install guide (1 min 30 s): youtu.be/FOaL89KT-L8
Android demo apps: patient app (APK) – doctor app (APK), both connected to the live demo and installable side by side.
Try the apps: unzip, flutter run – out of the box they connect to the demo server. Patient: +44 7700 900123, code 123456. Doctor email: osei@tidewell.dev; password: TidewellDoctor!. Dr. Samir Haddad (Riverside Clinic, Bath) books by token number; the demo has two cities, a $1.50 booking fee and a skipped patient in Dr. Osei’s queue.

AI disclosure: AI tools were used in making this item. An AI coding assistant (Claude by Anthropic) helped write and review the code, the documentation and the listing graphics. The author reviewed and tested all of it and is responsible for it. The item itself has no AI-powered features and sends no data to any AI service.

Doctor app sends a 15 minute delay and the patient app receives the push and the new time

The live wait

One source of truth for time – a doctor’s delay is their latest notice; every patient’s expected time is derived from it, so one notice moves the whole queue and nothing goes stale.

Delay notices – from the doctor app (“Update patients”) or the console’s live floor (“Tell patients”). Each waiting patient gets a push notification and the open app refreshes at once.

Leave-at time – the patient app works out when to set off from the live wait and the patient’s travel time, and schedules a “time to leave” reminder on the phone. A new delay moves the reminder.

Queue position – who is in the room, how many are ahead, and the booked versus expected time.

Patient app screens: home with live wait, find a doctor, choose a time, records and invoices

Patient app

Sign in with a phone number and a six-digit code. Choose a city and clinic, then find a doctor by specialty and real on-time record. Book a free slot or take a token number, see what you pay before booking, cancel, check in at the clinic, and join video visits. Records with past visits and visit summaries, invoices with card payment (Stripe Checkout), notifications, and four colour modes including two night modes. Patients can delete their account in the app, and the app links to the clinic’s privacy policy. The sign-in token is stored in the iOS Keychain and Android Keystore (flutter_secure_storage).

Booking by token number: the morning session closed, the evening session with number 12 at about 18:12, booked as Evening #12

Book by time or by token number

Per doctor – each doctor books by time slot or by token. With tokens, the patient picks a day and a session and gets the next number, for example “Evening #12”, with an estimated time. On the day, the live wait, delay notices and the leave-at reminder move that time like any other visit.

Morning and evening sessions – sessions are the doctor’s working hours; a break splits the day in two (for example 09:00-13:00 and 17:00-21:00), set separately for each weekday.

Maximum per day – cap the numbers each session gives out (20 + 20 = 40 a day), or leave it empty to give out as many as visits fit. A cancelled number is given out again, but never ahead of patients already waiting. The desk books tokens from the console too.

Rules for each session (new in 1.2) – give the morning and the evening their own cap (for example 50 and 30), an opening time (on the day at 07:00, or the evening before) and a booking cut-off (a set time such as 10:00, when the session starts, or minutes before it). A full or closed session says so, and the app offers the next session that can be booked.

Live queue: the doctor app with today's queue, skipped patients marked Arrived with Back next and At the end, and the patient's live wait

Live queue: skip, no-show, recall (new in 1.2)

No sitting idle – when a patient is not there, the doctor skips them and calls the next one. The skipped patient keeps their number; a no-show frees it.

Late arrivals – a skipped patient who checks in shows as “Arrived”. The doctor brings them back next or at the end of the queue, or the clinic sets that to happen automatically.

Every phone updates at once – each move sends a silent push to the doctor’s waiting patients and their app refreshes: patients ahead, now serving, and the new estimate. The patient now first in line gets a “You’re next” notification.

Estimate by real pace – optionally, the wait is worked out from how long today’s visits are really taking (patients ahead x the average of the last five visits), instead of booked time plus delay, and recalculated whenever the queue changes. Statuses: waiting, in room, seen, skipped, no-show.

Choose a city, choose a clinic in Bristol, and the confirm screen with a booking fee and the doctor's fee paid at the clinic

Cities, clinics and fees (new in 1.2)

City, clinic, doctor – with more than one site, patients pick a city, then a clinic, then see that clinic’s doctors. Automatic: a single-site clinic never sees these steps.

Platform booking fee – a fixed fee on every booking, set in the console and separate from the doctor’s fee. It is always paid in the app.

Doctor’s fee per clinic – each clinic chooses whether the doctor’s fee is paid in the app after the visit, in the app when booking (together with the booking fee), or at the clinic. Patients see the breakdown before they book; invoices carry a line per charge.

Confirm only once paid – optionally, a visit is held for a set time while the patient pays and is confirmed only when the payment provider confirms the charge; an unpaid hold is released automatically.

Doctor app screens: today queue, tell patients sheet, SOAP visit notes, schedule

Doctor app

Built from the same Flutter project (a second entry point). Today’s queue with the patient in the room, skip a patient who is not there and call them back, send a delay to everyone still to be seen, finish and call the next patient, write SOAP visit notes and sign them (the patient sees the summary), the week’s schedule and patient charts with allergy flags. Doctors sign in with an email and password created in the console.

Clinic console dashboard with appointments, average wait by hour and the live floor

Clinic console and API

Console – dashboard with average wait against your target and on-time starts, the live floor with each doctor’s delay and skipped patients, an appointments board with desk booking, doctors (profile, price, visit length, booking by time or token with rules per session, working hours with breaks, doctor app sign-in), patients, payments, reports, sites with their own city, time zone and way of taking the doctor’s fee, specialties, and settings for booking, the queue and payments. Every new setting starts at the previous behaviour, so updating changes nothing until you choose.

Invoices and refunds – every visit that is finished, by the doctor signing the note, tapping “Next patient” or the desk pressing “Finish visit”, gets its invoice automatically (one per visit and kind, enforced by a unique index), numbered per year (INV-2026-00001) under a database lock. A second tap on Pay reopens the same Stripe Checkout session, and the webhook only settles a due invoice whose amount and currency match. Paid invoices are refunded from the console: card payments back through Stripe, desk payments recorded.

No double bookings – booking locks the doctor’s row and a unique index on the slot refuses a second booking, even when two patients tap the same time at once. A doctor the clinic switches off takes no new bookings.

Sign-in limits – code requests and wrong codes are limited per phone number as well as per IP; requesting a new code does not reset the wrong-code count.

REST API – 40 documented endpoints with Laravel Sanctum tokens: phone sign-in, cities, clinics, doctors and free slots, booking, check-in, live wait, notifications, invoices and checkout, account deletion, and the doctor endpoints including skip, no-show and recall.

19 patient screens, 6 doctor screens, 12 console pages, 40 API endpoints, 164 backend tests, 4 colour modes

Third-party services (optional, not included in the price)

Tidewell runs without any of these. Each is switched on in the backend’s .env with your own account. You are responsible for all usage costs of these services, including Firebase and Jitsi; each provider bills you directly:

SMS sign-in codes – until you choose a provider, codes are written to the server log (fine for testing, not for patients). A Twilio driver is included; other providers implement one PHP interface.
Push notifications – Firebase Cloud Messaging with your own Firebase project; iOS also needs a paid Apple Developer account and an APNs key. Without push the apps refresh the live wait every 30 seconds.
Card payments – Stripe Checkout with a signed webhook. Without it, visits are paid at the clinic.
Video visits – open a Jitsi Meet room in the browser or the Jitsi app; this is a meeting link, not an in-app video SDK. The free public server works for trying; use your own Jitsi server or a paid plan for real consultations.

Requirements

Apps: the latest stable Flutter SDK (3.x); Android SDK platform 36, minSdk 24; the latest Xcode on a Mac for iOS builds.
Backend: PHP 8.3 or newer; MySQL 8+ or MariaDB 10.6+ (SQLite for trying). The Laravel framework and every package are installed by Composer, so you get the current compatible releases at install time.
Install tools: Composer 2 and a current Node.js LTS (to build the console’s CSS), on the server or on your own computer.
A live server must run with APP_ENV=production and APP_DEBUG=false. Exact tested versions for each release are listed in the documentation.

What you get

Flutter source for both apps, Laravel source for the API and console with demo data and 164 tests, offline HTML documentation (install, rebrand, services, API reference, troubleshooting). The product tour and install guide videos are on YouTube (links above). Demo photos are from Pexels and are not included; the download has placeholders with the same file names. Fonts: Sora and Spline Sans Mono (SIL OFL). Icons: Lucide (ISC).

Roadmap

Planned updates, in order. Nothing below is in the current download yet. Every new feature will arrive as a setting that starts switched off, so updating never changes how your clinic works until you turn it on. Updates are free for buyers, and buyer requests move items up the list.

1.2.2 – two small visual fixes: the progress bar of a session that has not opened yet, and the bottom panels in the doctor app.

1.3.0 – payments

New payment gateways: PayPal, Razorpay, Paystack, Flutterwave and Mollie, each confirmed by the provider’s webhook like Stripe
The console shows which payment, SMS and push drivers are switched on

1.4.0 – more of the live wait

Waiting-room screen: open it on the clinic’s TV to show who is in the room, who is next and each doctor’s delay
Waitlist: when a slot is cancelled, the next patient on the list is offered it by push
Delay and “time to leave” messages by WhatsApp or SMS, for patients who do not use the app
A delay forecast at the start of the day, from each doctor’s on-time record
Push notifications in the doctor app

1.5.0 – clinic and patient

Multi-language with right-to-left (Arabic) support in both apps and the console
Family members: book for a child or a parent from one account
Receptionist role: console access to appointments and the queue, without settings or payments
Ratings after a visit, shown next to the doctor’s on-time record
In-app video calls (today a video visit opens a Jitsi meeting link)

Support

Setup questions are answered through the item’s support tab.

Changelog

1.2.1 (11 October 2026)

Fixed: night-mode contrast for the selected day and filters, the booked check mark, the cancel button, and the console’s radio buttons and dark buttons

1.2.0 (11 October 2026)

New: live queue moves in the doctor app and console: skip, no-show, bring back next or at the end; “Arrived” for late patients
New: instant queue updates on every waiting patient’s phone, and a “You’re next” notification
New: optional wait estimate by the real pace of today’s visits
New: rules per token session: cap, opening time and booking cut-off; the app offers the next open session
New: city, then clinic, then doctor browsing in the patient app
New: platform booking fee on every booking; per-clinic choice of how the doctor’s fee is paid (after the visit, when booking, at the clinic)
New: optional “confirm only once paid” with a time-limited hold
New: console settings for booking, queue and payments; every setting starts at the 1.1 behaviour
Updated: documentation, demo data (two cities), 72 new backend tests

1.1.0 (9 October 2026)

New: booking by token number per doctor, with morning and evening sessions and a cap per session
New: estimated time for every token, moved by the live wait, delay notices and the leave-at reminder
New: desk booking of tokens in the console; token numbers on every visit in the console and both apps
New: demo Android APKs of both apps; the doctor app can be built with its own app id to sit next to the patient app
Updated: documentation (booking modes section), 10 new backend tests

1.0.0 – Initial release.

Tidewell | Flutter Doctor Appointment App With Live Wait