Modernizing OpenELIS Frontend with TypeScript and Performance Optimization

The current OpenELIS React frontend is primarily written in JavaScript and faces challenges in maintainability, scalability, and performance as data complexity increases. This results in inconsistent type usage, increased bugs, and inefficient rendering in data-heavy workflows such as patient management, sample tracking, and result entry. This project aims to modernize the frontend by incrementally migrating the codebase to TypeScript and applying proven React performance optimization techniques. The migration will introduce a centralized type system for API models, forms, and reusable components, ensuring consistency and reducing duplication across the codebase. The project will follow a phased approach: first establishing a strong TypeScript foundation with shared type definitions, then incrementally migrating utilities, components, and high-impact screens. In parallel, performance optimizations will be implemented using profiling-driven techniques such as memoization, virtualization for large datasets, improved server-state handling, and code splitting. Deliverables include: - Incremental migration of frontend codebase to TypeScript - Centralized and reusable type definition system - Performance improvements in key workflows - Reduced bundle size and improved rendering efficiency - Documentation and migration guide for future contributors This project will significantly improve the maintainability, developer experience, and performance of the OpenELIS frontend, making it more scalable for future growth.