ABOUT PROJECT
Anyone who’s ever tried to find a therapist in Ireland knows the frustration. You’re dealing with endless phone calls, scribbled-down names from friends, and waiting lists that stretch so far into the future you’ve almost forgotten why you needed help in the first place. Founder Michael Harty saw this broken system and knew there had to be a better way. Harty’s vision for Clinic Direct was refreshingly straightforward: what if getting therapy could be as easy as booking a restaurant table online? But this wasn’t just about making life more convenient. It was about tackling a real crisis – people waiting months for essential support, hospitals overwhelmed with cases that could have been addressed earlier, and a healthcare system stretched to breaking point.
What makes Clinic Direct special is that it solves problems on both sides of the equation. If you’re looking for a therapist, you can search by area, see who’s available, book an appointment, pay online, and keep all your receipts in one tidy place. No more playing phone tag or losing important paperwork. For therapists, the platform takes away all the administrative headaches that make running a practice feel like a second full-time job. Bookings, payments, clinical notes, tax returns – Clinic Direct handles it all, freeing therapists to actually do what they trained for: helping people.
Key Challenges
When Clinic Direct asked Roobykon to build an interactive body diagram, a seemingly simple feature quickly became a technical challenge. Therapists needed clinical accuracy, patients needed intuitive usability, and the team had to ensure seamless performance across devices while staying GDPR-compliant.
Every design decision, from anatomical detail to body views and marking methods, impacted user experience, database structure, and clinical workflow. Through multiple iterations, the Roobykon team balanced simplicity with precision, ultimately delivering a tool that enhances consultations, supports accurate documentation, and builds trust for both patients and therapists.
TECHNOLOGY STACK
Solution Highlights
Rather than reinventing the wheel, Roobykon made a strategic decision to build Clinic Direct on Sharetribe, a robust marketplace platform that provided the perfect foundation for connecting therapists with patients. Payment processing was handled through Stripe, providing secure, transparent transactions for patients and easy payout management for therapists.
To support performance, data privacy, and scalability, the platform is hosted on AWS, ensuring fast load times, high availability, and compliance with healthcare data standards. This combination of Sharetribe, Stripe, and AWS allowed Roobykon to focus on crafting a user-friendly interface and advanced features like the interactive body diagram, while delivering a robust, professional-grade platform capable of serving both patients and therapists across Ireland.
THE PROCESS
01
Requirement gathering and analysis (August 2025, 1 week): Building on our existing relationship with the client, Michael Harty, Roobykon began by thoroughly understanding the vision for Clinic Direct. We reviewed current pain points, identified key features, and outlined functional and technical requirements.
02
Design and development (August – September 2025): Once requirements were finalized, our UX/UI and development teams designed an intuitive interface and built the platform. Features were implemented iteratively: the Therapist Notes page, interactive Body Diagram, and advanced patient search were developed, tested, and refined.
03
Communication and feedback loops (Throughout August – September 2025): Regular check-ins with the client ensured alignment at every stage. Feedback on prototypes and feature iterations was quickly incorporated, allowing for agile adjustments without delaying progress.
04
Project management and QA(September 2025): The final weeks focused on polishing features, performing extensive QA testing, and ensuring all workflows (from bookings to note downloads) worked flawlessly. The team documented processes and prepared for a smooth handover, although the platform has not been officially launched yet.
Main Features
Therapist notes page
When a customer books a therapist and the session is accepted, a record is automatically added to the database, linking the transaction to the specific customer’s notes page. Therapists can switch between customers using the selector at the top, and notes cannot be posted without a selected customer, ensuring accurate record keeping. Additionally, therapists can download notes in PDF format (diagrams excluded), making it easy to maintain offline documentation while keeping patient data organized and secure.
Interactive body diagram
Therapists can choose the body view (front, back, side) via a dropdown, and mark areas of concern with crosses and slashes. All inputs are saved in the database and can be reviewed alongside the notes. Adding a diagram is optional and initiated via an “Add Body Diagram” button, with a delete option to disable it if needed. The history of body diagrams is accessible through corresponding notes, and mobile displays are optimized so the diagram section remains hidden until activated, ensuring a clean, responsive interface.
Custom patient search in inbox
Therapists can now search for patients by first or last name and select the correct patient from a filtered dropdown list. Unlike before, the search now includes all provider tariffs, not just new ones, making patient management faster and more accurate. Patients themselves cannot search for other patients or therapists, keeping the system secure and focused on professional use.
RESULTS
Working with Clinic Direct, Roobykon helped create a platform that truly changes how patients and therapists connect in Ireland. We built a seamless, secure, and easy-to-use marketplace where people can quickly find CORU-regulated therapists, book appointments, and handle payments – all while keeping records clear and organized. For therapists, it’s more than a booking tool: the platform manages appointments, payments, clinical notes, and even tax documentation, giving them more time to focus on what matters most – patient care.
Even though Clinic Direct hasn’t launched yet, the development journey has already been full of wins. Features like the Therapist Notes page, interactive Body Diagram, and custom patient search have been successfully built, tested, and refined with feedback from both the client and users, ensuring the platform is ready to deliver real value from day one.
Lessons from Rent From Locals
From the very beginning, we knew we were building something unique – Ireland’s first online marketplace for CORU-regulated therapists – but the complexity of the platform quickly became apparent. Implementing features like the interactive Body Diagram pushed us to think beyond standard solutions. We learned how crucial it is to balance clinical accuracy with intuitive design, and how even small details, like the placement of a button or the way a diagram is displayed on mobile, can dramatically affect usability and trust.
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