Pharmacy Education / Web Platform
PACU
A pharmacy education platform that brings public course discovery, operational content, and custom learning tools together for clinicians preparing for practice and board certification.
Public evidence
These reviewed public sources support the adjacent build claims; they do not imply adoption or unmeasured outcomes.
Problem
- Target user
- Pharmacy professionals who need one place to discover courses, stay current with clinical literature, and prepare for board certification.
- Challenge
- The learner journey crosses a public WordPress site, Airtable-supported operations, and custom application features, so content, account access, and study tools must stay aligned across different systems.
- Why it mattered
- When course information, subscription entitlements, or operational records disagree, learners can lose access and administrators can be blocked from supporting them.
Constraints
- The live platform needed targeted improvements without interrupting active learning and administrative workflows.
- WordPress, Airtable, custom application code, APIs, and PostgreSQL each owned a different part of the experience.
- Subscription access and personalized study state had to remain consistent across learner and administrator surfaces.
Solution
PACU uses each layer for the work it handles best: WordPress for public content, Airtable for flexible operations, and custom builds for specialized learning and administration.
- Publish course, board-prep, literature, pricing, and resource information through the public WordPress experience.
- Support content and operational records in Airtable where the team needs fast, structured updates.
- Use custom React and TypeScript interfaces with Node.js APIs and PostgreSQL for personalized study programs, eBook reading, review reminders, subscription entitlements, and admin workflows.
- Trace production issues across the relevant layer, apply a targeted fix, verify it with tests, and support the rollout.
Engineering Decisions
Use fit-for-purpose platform layers
- Constraint
- Marketing content, flexible operational records, and specialized learning workflows have different editing, validation, and release needs.
- Decision
- Keep public publishing in WordPress, support adaptable operations with Airtable, and build product-specific behavior in the custom application stack.
- Rationale
- Let the PACU team update routine content and records quickly without forcing complex learner and entitlement logic into a general-purpose CMS.
Treat access as application state
- Constraint
- A visible purchase or account record does not guarantee that the learner has the correct study, reader, or subscription access.
- Decision
- Trace entitlement rules through the interface, API, and database, then repair mismatches at the layer that owns the state.
- Rationale
- Restore blocked learner and administrator workflows without masking the underlying data or access issue.
Outcomes
Product and delivery
3 delivery layers
Right tool for each job
Combined WordPress publishing, Airtable-supported operations, and custom full-stack features in one client platform.
Learner + admin
Two sides supported
Covered learner-facing study, reading, reminder, and subscription flows alongside the administrative workflows that support them.
Learnings and Next Steps
What I learned
- A content-heavy education business benefits from a CMS, while specialized learner and administrator workflows still need purpose-built application code.
- Mixed-platform delivery works best when ownership of content, operational records, and subscription state is explicit.
What I would improve
- Continue strengthening cross-system regression coverage and operational documentation as learning products and subscription paths evolve.
What remains unvalidated
- The live site demonstrates delivered capabilities, but it does not by itself attribute learner growth, certification outcomes, or revenue changes to this engineering work.