Case study · Credentialing platform
From paid application to certified nurse, in one secure pipeline.
A credentialing portal for a national nursing certification board: online application, payment, double-blind peer review, automated decisions, and a public verification registry.
- Client
- National nursing certification board
- Role
- Solo consultant: scoping, architecture, build, launch
- Status
- Live in production
- 3user roles with separate, siloed portals
- 2independent blind reviewers per portfolio
- 5external services integrated (auth, payments, CRM, email, clinical data)
- 0new infrastructure added for the review pipeline
The pipeline
Eight steps, fully automated end to end
Apply
Candidate signs up with role-based access and secure authentication.
Portfolio received
Clinical portfolio arrives from a training partner via a secure API callback.
Pay
Stripe Checkout with webhook confirmation, branded PDF receipt and email.
Auto-assign reviewers
Workload-balanced selection of two reviewers, with decline and reassignment handling.
Blind review
Reviewers see an anonymized ID only and score against the board’s rubric.
Decision
Scores compared automatically; agreement renders a result, disagreement escalates.
Credential issued
Unique credential number, expiry date, and a searchable public registry for employers.
Feedback report
Auto-generated PDF turning rubric scores into actionable feedback for the candidate.
When reviewers disagree, the system flags the portfolio and routes it to a senior reviewer for a deciding review. Decision thresholds are admin-configurable, not hardcoded.
Engineering highlights
Decisions that made it work
Secure, role-based portals with double-blind review built in.
Rubric as configuration
Scores are stored as flexible JSON, so the board can add, remove, or reweight rubric categories without a database migration.
Zero new infrastructure
The entire review pipeline runs on the original Postgres database and serverless deployment. Monthly hosting costs did not increase.
The certifier owns the certification
Review data and scoring live in the board’s own system, not the training partner’s, avoiding a conflict of interest and vendor lock-in.
Stack & integrations
Built on a lean, modern stack
- Frontend
- Next.js
- React
- TypeScript
- Tailwind CSS
- Data
- PostgreSQL (Neon)
- Prisma ORM
- Payments & CRM
- Stripe Checkout
- Stripe webhooks
- Zoho CRM (OAuth2)
- Comms & docs
- Resend email
- React-PDF documents
- Integrations
- Clinical partner REST API
- Two-way status sync
- Delivery
- Vercel
- Preview + production