🔄 CareLoop

Bridging the gap between Elders, their Families, and Caretakers

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📖 Overview

CareLoop is a cross-platform Flutter mobile application designed to improve the quality of care for elderly individuals by seamlessly connecting three stakeholders:

• 👴 Elders — Receive care, log feelings, track medications, and send emergency alerts.
• 👨‍👩‍👧 Family Members — Monitor their elder's health, hire caretakers, and receive real-time alerts.
• 🧑‍⚕️ Caretakers — Onboard professionally, get assigned to elders, and manage daily care duties.

CareLoop brings together authentication, real-time data sync, encrypted personal data, and local notifications under a single, role-aware mobile application.

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✨ Features

👴 Elder

• Log daily mood / feelings
• View and acknowledge medication reminders
• Trigger emergency SOS alerts (notifies family + caretaker)
• View personal profile and linked caretaker details

👨‍👩‍👧 Family

• Real-time dashboard of their elder's health state
• Browse & hire available caretakers
• Receive and manage hire requests
• View health reports and activity history

🧑‍⚕️ Caretaker

• Professional onboarding with skill declaration
• Toggle availability for hire
• Accept / reject hire requests from families
• View assigned elders and manage care schedules

⚙️ Shared

• Multi-language support (via LocalizationService)
• Dark / Light theme toggle
• Background health monitoring service
• AES-256 encrypted PII in Firestore (name, email, phone)

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🛠️ Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
Framework	Flutter 3.x (Dart)
Auth & Identity	AWS Amplify + Amazon Cognito (email + OTP flow)
Database	Firebase Firestore (real-time, NoSQL)
Notifications	Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) + flutter_local_notifications
Encryption	AES-256 via the encrypt Dart package
Background Service	flutter_background_service
State Management	ValueNotifier + StatefulWidget
Local Storage	shared_preferences
Charts	fl_chart
Theming	Custom ThemeNotifier + Material 3

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🏗️ Architecture & Methodology

CareLoop follows a layered service architecture:

lib/
├── main.dart                  # App entry point, Firebase & Amplify init
├── firebase_options.dart      # Firebase platform config (⚠️ template only — see Setup)
├── amplifyconfiguration.dart  # AWS Amplify config (⚠️ template only — see Setup)
│
├── config/                    # Theme, colors, text styles
├── models/                    # Data models (User, Elder, AuthResult, …)
├── services/                  # Business logic & platform integrations
│   ├── auth_service.dart      # Cognito auth + Firestore user profiles
│   ├── encryption_service.dart# AES-256 PII encryption / decryption
│   ├── emergency_service.dart # SOS alert broadcasts
│   ├── medication_service.dart# Medication CRUD
│   ├── background_monitor_service.dart  # Background health checks
│   └── localization_service.dart        # Multi-language strings
├── data/                      # Local storage helpers & seed data
├── screens/                   # UI screens grouped by role
│   ├── onboarding/            # Language selection, login, register
│   ├── elder/                 # Elder home, medications, notifications
│   ├── family/                # Family home, reports, hire caretaker
│   ├── caretaker/             # Caretaker home, profile, elder detail
│   ├── settings/              # App settings
│   └── shared/                # Emergency alert (all roles)
└── widgets/                   # Reusable UI components

Key design decisions:

• Role-based navigation — On login, the app routes to the correct home screen (elder / family / caretaker) based on the verified Firestore role, not the self-selected UI role, preventing privilege escalation.
• Separation of concerns — All Firebase and AWS calls are encapsulated in services/, keeping screens stateless and testable.
• Singleton services — AuthService, EncryptionService, and LocalStorageService are singletons to ensure a single source of truth for session state.

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🔒 Security Design

Concern	Implementation
Authentication	AWS Cognito with email + OTP verification. Sessions managed by Amplify SDK.
Role enforcement	Role validation happens server-side (from Firestore) at login — not from client input.
PII encryption	Name, email, and phone stored in Firestore are encrypted with AES-256 before write and decrypted only on an authenticated client.
No secrets in code	firebase_options.dart and amplifyconfiguration.dart are template files excluded via .gitignore. Real credentials must be generated locally.
Key management (⚠️ Production TODO)	The current AES key is hardcoded for development. In production, replace it with Android Keystore / iOS Secure Enclave or a cloud KMS.

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✅ Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have the following installed:

• Flutter SDK ≥ 3.0
• Dart SDK ≥ 3.0
• Android Studio or VS Code with Flutter extension
• A Firebase project with Firestore and FCM enabled
• An AWS account with Amplify + Cognito configured
• Node.js (for Amplify CLI)

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🚀 Installation & Setup

1. Clone the Repository

git clone https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/care_loop_v1.git
cd care_loop_v1

2. Install Flutter Dependencies

flutter pub get

3. Configure Firebase

1. Create a Firebase project at console.firebase.google.com
2. Enable Firestore Database and Cloud Messaging
3. Register Android (and optionally iOS / Web) apps in your project
4. Install the FlutterFire CLI:

   dart pub global activate flutterfire_cli

5. Run configuration from the project root:

   flutterfire configure

   This generates lib/firebase_options.dart and android/app/google-services.json with your real credentials.

4. Configure AWS Amplify (Cognito Auth)

1. Install the Amplify CLI:

   npm install -g @aws-amplify/cli
   amplify configure

2. Initialize Amplify in the project:

   amplify init
   amplify add auth
   amplify push

   This generates lib/amplifyconfiguration.dart with your Cognito Pool IDs.

3. In Cognito, ensure your User Pool is configured with:

   • Username: Email
   • Required attributes: email, phone_number, name
   • Verification: Email OTP

5. Firestore Security Rules

Set up the following basic Firestore rules in your Firebase Console:

rules_version = '2';
service cloud.firestore {
  match /databases/{database}/documents {
    match /users/{userId} {
      allow read, write: if request.auth != null;
    }
    match /elders/{elderId} {
      allow read, write: if request.auth != null;
    }
    match /caretakers/{caretakerId} {
      allow read, write: if request.auth != null;
    }
    match /hire_requests/{requestId} {
      allow read, write: if request.auth != null;
    }
    match /active_assignments/{assignmentId} {
      allow read, write: if request.auth != null;
    }
  }
}

Tip: Tighten these rules per role in production.

6. Run the App

# Check connected devices
flutter devices

# Run on Android
flutter run

# Run in release mode
flutter run --release

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🌐 Environment Variables & Secrets

⚠️ Never commit real credentials to version control.

The following files are excluded from Git and must be generated locally:

File	How to generate
lib/firebase_options.dart	flutterfire configure
firebase.json	flutterfire configure
android/app/google-services.json	flutterfire configure
ios/Runner/GoogleService-Info.plist	flutterfire configure
lib/amplifyconfiguration.dart	amplify push

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🤝 Contributing

1. Fork the repo
2. Create a feature branch: git checkout -b feature/your-feature-name
3. Commit your changes: git commit -m 'feat: add your feature'
4. Push to the branch: git push origin feature/your-feature-name
5. Open a Pull Request

Please make sure you do not commit any credential files (they are blocked by .gitignore).

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📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.

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👤 Author

Enoch Jackson C.
📧 enochjackson441@gmail.com

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Made with ❤️ using Flutter