Secure health records system on Laravel, Vue.js and a HIPAA-eligible AWS stack

The client offers a digital health management platform for small and mid-size clinics, hospitals and individual providers. Their legacy electronic health records (EHR) system could no longer meet usability, performance or security expectations.

The challenge

• Security and compliance risk: the old system did not meet HIPAA standards, which put patient data at risk and limited growth.
• Clunky interface: providers lost time and risked errors.
• No patient access: patients could not view their records or message providers securely.
• Manual processes: scheduling, medication updates and lab result sharing were handled by hand.
• Poor interoperability: weak integration with labs, pharmacies and insurers created information silos.

What we built

Back end: Laravel

Laravel services designed around HIPAA requirements: TLS 1.2 or newer in transit, AES-256 at rest and strict access controls. Detailed audit logs record every user action, and role-based access control separates admins, doctors, nurses and patients. HL7 FHIR support allows data exchange with providers, labs and pharmacy systems, and a secure REST API built with Laravel Passport serves the web and mobile apps.

Front end: Vue.js

Dashboards give doctors and nurses patient summaries, lab results, medications and visit history in one view. A patient portal lets patients sign in, read results, download history and message providers. Appointment status and prescription notifications update in real time through Laravel Echo and WebSockets. The interface was built with accessibility in mind, including screen reader and keyboard-only use.

Cloud: AWS

Resources run inside a private VPC. Services include Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL with encryption at rest, S3 for document storage, CloudTrail and CloudWatch for logging and monitoring, and an Elastic Load Balancer. Daily encrypted backups and tested failover support recovery, keys rotate through AWS KMS, and admin operations require multi-factor authentication. Only HIPAA-eligible AWS services were used, under a signed business associate agreement.

Security and testing

Third-party penetration testing and vulnerability scans ran before go-live, and alerts cover unauthorised access, unusual data access and audit-trail tampering. Laravel Dusk and PHPUnit cover backend and UI tests, load tests simulated 5,000 concurrent users, and medical staff took part in acceptance testing during development.

Outcome

The platform passed the client's security audits and legal review, which opened partnerships with larger healthcare providers. Patients use the portal to manage their own data, and clinicians spend less time on charting. The modular, cloud-based design lets the client onboard new clinics as demand grows.

Work with us

Building in healthcare or another regulated space? Talk to us.