Background
Kwong Wai Shiu Hospital (KWSH) is one of Singapore’s oldest and largest charitable healthcare institutions, offering a comprehensive range of services including inpatient care, outpatient clinics, rehabilitation, and community health programmes. Its largest division is the nursing home, with over 1,100 beds across two locations in Potong Pasir and Serangoon.
In 2025, CVWO partnered with KWSH to address a recurring operational challenge faced by its nursing home staff. Nurses often had to manually contact the NOK of patients to seek consent for activities (e.g. vaccinations). This process was highly time-consuming, especially given the large number of patients and NOK involved. The resulting delays and administrative overhead highlighted the need for a more efficient, reliable communication system.
To address this challenge, we collaborated with KWSH to create a solution that streamlines communication between nurses and NOK through both web and mobile platforms. We enhanced our existing Cornerstone system to build a dedicated web application for KWSH staff to initiate communications, and developed CVWO’s first native mobile application for NOK to receive and respond to requests.
Key Contributions
Broadcasting Module
The broadcasting module is the main module of the application, and enables nurses to send consent requests to all NOK in a specific ward with a single click, eliminating the need for manual phone calls. All responses to a particular broadcast are consolidated in a single page, allowing staff to track which NOK have replied. The module also supports both scheduled and manual reminders, which are sent as push notifications to non-respondents. On the NOK mobile app, users can easily view outstanding broadcasts and respond directly through a simple and intuitive interface.
Messaging Module
On top of the broadcasting module, we also designed a messaging module to facilitate ad-hoc, one-to-one communication between nurses and NOK. Its design is inspired by popular messaging platforms like Whatsapp and Telegram, to ensure familiarity and ease of use for both staff and NOK.
Onboarding Process
This project also presented a unique challenge: onboarding approximately 3,000 NOK — a significantly larger user base and a different demographic compared to our usual projects, which typically serve only an organisation’s internal staff. As such, we dedicated additional effort to designing an onboarding process tailored to this audience, ensuring that every NOK would know how to download and begin using the app.
Project Team
- Wong Swee Chong, Dave (Project Lead, Year 2)
- Phoebe Yap Xin Hui (Developer, Year 1)
- Srisukhawasu Phanuphat (Developer, Year 1)
- Kosolpattanadurong Thitiwat (Developer, Year 1)
- Ngo Hoang Nhat Minh (Developer, Year 1)
- Javier Enrique Wong (Developer, Year 1)
- Hon Yi Hao (Developer, Year 1)
- Noah Seethor Leyang (Developer, Year 1)
- Shen Zihan (Developer, Year 1)
- Peh Hou Jin (Developer, Year 1)
- Pham Hai Minh (Developer, Year 1)
Afterthoughts
It has been a great experience to serve in CVWO again, working on interesting projects to benefit the community. I am thankful to have had such a great and talented team alongside me for the summer.
– Dave
CVWO has been a truly eye-opening experience, helping me connect technical skills with real-world business needs. Building products for real users with pressing needs gave me insights and growth that few other experiences can offer.
– Phoebe
Doing CVWO was truly a summer well spent. I learned something valuable, met someone inspiring, and did something meaningful for society.
– Oad
CVWO has been a wonderful experience that exposed me to a lot of practical and valuable insights in software engineering. Going through the CVWO codebase while sipping coffee was definitely a unique experience ☕️ :) Thank you to every person involved in this program for creating such a memorable experience throughout this summer break.
– Beam
CVWO has been an incredibly rewarding experience. I’m grateful to have the opportunity to learn real-world software engineering principles while making meaningful changes to our community.
– Lucas
CVWO was an eye-opening experience that taught me both technical skills and real-world business workflows — in just three months, we delivered impactful projects that help real people
– Javier
During CVWO, we learned that a career in Computer Science isn’t just about financial gain. More importantly, it’s about building systems that can have a meaningful and positive impact on society.
– Yi Hao
CVWO has been an intense but rewarding journey. From tackling real-world challenges to building systems that truly matter, this experience pushed me to grow as a software engineer. I’m grateful to have been a part of something so meaningful.
– Noah
CVWO gave me the opportunity to contribute to society by improving a website used by real users. As someone with little prior experience, it deepened my understanding of web applications and made me appreciate the non-technical nuance of real-world software engineering.
– Zihan
CVWO was an invaluable opportunity for me to experience first-hand what being in an SWE team was like. I also picked up numerous transferrable skills along the way, be it managing clients or designing user-centric features.
– Hou Jin
CVWO was a challenging but valuable opportunity, I’m incredibly grateful for all the lessons I have learned from Prof. Ben, my team lead and all members in my team. It equipped me with not only technical skills but also soft skills that can’t be taught elsewhere.
– Minh
We would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to the following individuals and organisations for their invaluable support and influence throughout our project:
- GIC for their generous support
- Prof. Ben Leong (NUS) for his guidance and mentorship
- GIC GPP Mentors Wincent, Daryl, Zechary and Ian for their guidance