Healthcare
ZwangerenPortaal — Healthcare Platform (2.5M+ Users)
PHP/Symfony backend on a Dutch patient portal used by over 2.5 million new parents. The value is continuity: the product stays live while architecture and APIs improve.
The problem
ZwangerenPortaal.nl is a patient portal in the Netherlands serving over 2.5 million new parents, built with LinkORB Engineering. Healthcare software cannot go down for rewrites — expectant parents and midwives depend on it daily. The challenge: improve the architecture and add new features without disrupting a system that must stay live.
My approach
I worked as part of the backend team for over a decade, delivering incremental improvements rather than risky big-bang changes:
- Incremental migration: Moved legacy PHP code toward maintainable Symfony modules, one domain at a time
- API development: Built and extended APIs that integrate with hospital systems, appointment scheduling, and patient records
- Zero-downtime deployments: Structured releases so the platform stayed available through every change
- Long-term ownership: Understood the full system deeply enough to make safe, confident changes
Results
- Platform has shipped continuously for 10+ years without major outages during my tenure
- New features now land in well-structured Symfony code instead of accumulating technical debt
- Backend architecture supports the product roadmap without requiring a rewrite
For organisations
This is what long-running product engineering looks like: keep the live system reliable, improve it in safe steps, and ship new backend work — all while remote from India on EU hours.