High-Concurrency Inventory Control for Clinical Operations
In healthcare facilities, stock discrepancy or expired inventory is not merely a financial loss; it directly impacts patient care workflows. I built a resilient, concurrent backend service in Go (Golang) and the Gin web framework, giving hospital pharmacists and clinical teams real-time visibility into pharmaceutical stock, batch expiry timelines, and audit records.
Architectural Highlights & Implementation
- Concurrent API Performance in Go: Leveraged Go goroutines and Gin routing to support 50+ concurrent medical staff members executing real-time barcode scans, check-ins, and batch updates without lock contention.
- Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) & JWT Security: Implemented cryptographic JWT authentication middleware enforcing granular role permissions (Super Admin, Pharmacist, Nurse, Auditor) across all API endpoints to prevent unauthorized stock alterations.
- Near-Expiry Alerting Engine: Designed background Go worker routines querying PostgreSQL/GORM with composite indexes (
expiry_date,batch_id,category), generating automated near-expiry alerts and Excel reports. This cut reporting turnaround by 40% and reduced medication expiry waste by 20%. - Operational Resilience & Containerization: Structured the backend within lightweight multi-stage Docker containers with automated health checks (
/healthz) and restart policies that guaranteed 99.9% uptime across hospital operational shifts.
Key Engineering Decisions
- Why Go & Gin: Selected Go over Node.js for this service due to strict memory footprint constraints on on-premise hospital gateway servers and Go's static typing, ensuring predictable p99 latencies under intake surges.
- GORM Connection Pooling: Configured aggressive PostgreSQL connection pooling (
SetMaxIdleConns,SetMaxOpenConns,SetConnMaxLifetime) to prevent socket exhaustion during peak outpatient shifts. - Structured Audit Logging: The service records every inventory modification as an immutable transaction log, providing an auditable trail required for healthcare regulatory compliance.