During the Easter break of 2026, I returned to a project I had already paused twice.
The first version had started as eHealth, inspired by my experience as a patient in a public hospital in Cameroon.
Later, the idea became a laboratory management system after I got the opportunity to understand the problem from a different perspective.
Then my GCE Advanced Level examinations and circumstances around the onboarding process forced me to pause again.
But I couldn't leave it there.
So I opened the project again.
This time, I decided to think bigger.
Back to the original idea
My first idea had always been connected to hospitals.
So when I returned to the project, I started rebuilding it as a hospital management platform.
The idea was ambitious.
Instead of creating a system for one laboratory, I started imagining a platform where multiple hospitals could have their own digital environments.
Different users.
Different roles.
Different workflows.
Patients, doctors, nurses, laboratory staff and administrators could all have their place in the system.
Technically, it was the biggest project I had ever attempted.
And honestly, I was excited.
I had more experience than when I built my first version in Flutter.
I understood software development better.
I had better tools available.
And AI also helped me move faster through parts of the development process.
AI helped me build faster, but it didn't make the decisions for me
AI was becoming an important part of my workflow.
It helped me explore ideas, understand unfamiliar concepts and move faster through repetitive parts of development.
But I still had to make the important decisions.
I reviewed what was being built.
I handled sensitive parts carefully.
I tested workflows.
And I kept asking myself whether the system actually made sense.
That was important because a large healthcare platform can quickly become complicated.
Adding more features doesn't automatically create more value.
Sometimes, it just creates more things that can break.
The temptation to solve everything
At that point, I was thinking about a lot of possibilities.
Multiple hospitals.
More users.
More workflows.
More features.
A bigger market.
And, of course, a bigger business opportunity.
But there was a problem I hadn't fully understood yet.
Trying to solve everything can make it harder to solve anything well.
I was building something increasingly large before I had completely validated what part of the healthcare system I was best positioned to understand and serve.
The platform was growing.
But I was still learning.
I didn't know it at the time, but I would eventually have to make a difficult product decision.
I would have to reduce the scope.
Not because the hospital idea was impossible.
But because focus can sometimes be more powerful than ambition.
That lesson would eventually lead me back to laboratories.
And that decision would give the project a name that has now become a central part of my journey:
nanoLabs.
But before that happened, there was another chapter.
Another meeting.
Another attempt to take the idea beyond my laptop.
And another lesson waiting for me.
The next chapter was where the real test began.
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