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Overview

Getting started with our Medical API is pretty easy, you’ll just need take the following steps:

  1. Create a developer account.
  2. Generate an API key.
  3. Integrate your app with Metriport.
  4. Create Facilities and Patients.
  5. Get Patient Medical Documents.
  6. Get Patient FHIR Resources. 🔥
  7. Generate Patient Medical Record Summary. 📄
  8. Share Medical Data with the Networks. 🏥
  9. Request API access.

Feel free to check this demo video out before getting started to get a high level overview of the platform:

Let’s get into it! 🤘

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1. Create a developer account

Click me to go to the developer dashboard!

This will take you to the Metriport developer dashboard where you can create your Metriport account, if you don't have one already.

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2. Generate an API key

After we approve your access request, take the following steps to get your API key:

  • Toggle the Sandbox switch in the Dashboard navbar to enter Sandbox mode (learn more about this here).
  • In the left hand menu, click Developers.
  • On the Developers page, you’ll be able to click the “Generate Secret Key” button.

The API key will only be displayed once. Please make sure to save it to a secure location before leaving the page.

This Secret Key will allow you to start making requests to the entire Metriport API on your behalf. Treat this like a password, and keep it somewhere safe! You can read the API Keys page to learn more about API key security best practices.

If you believe your key has been compromised, you can always revoke it and then generate a new one on the Developers page by clicking the trash button beside the key.

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3. Integrate your app with Metriport

Note that there are two ways to receive data from Metriport:

  • Webhook: Metriport sends patient data to your app when it becomes available:
    • your application exposes a webhook (endpoint), which Metriport calls when there’s Patient data available after initiating a query;
    • to learn more about how the Webhook flow works, see our Webhooks guide.
  • API: Your app requests data from Metriport:
    • your application polls Metriport for Patients’ medical data after initiating a query to fetch a Patient’s documents;

We recommend using Webhooks to ensure you’re able to get patient data as quickly and easily as possible.

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4. Create Facilities and Patients

For the remainder of the steps, you are able to either use the Dashboard UI, or the API - whatever you prefer!

Pro-tip: you can use our handy SDK on your server if you’re using Node:

import { MetriportMedicalApi } from "@metriport/api-sdk";

const metriportClient = new MetriportMedicalApi("YOUR_API_KEY");

Now you can now create Facilities and Patients. First, you’ll need to create your Facilities.

In Metriport, a Facility is a location that a Patient receives some form of treatment. You can create multiple Facilities to represent each of your care locations. Note that for telehealth practices, these can be virtual locations.

In Sandbox mode, you can use the test NPI 1234567893 when creating Facilities.

You can create a Facility by either:

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Creating Facilities using the API

See the Create Facility endpoint in our API reference.

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Creating Facilities using the Dashboard

  • On the Medical API page, in the Facilities section, click Add.
  • Fill in the details and submit the form to add your Facility.

Once you’ve created all of your Facilities, you can create the Patients that you treat each facility. You can create Patients by either:

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Creating Patients using the API

See the Create Patient endpoint in our API reference.

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Creating Patients using the Dashboard

  • On the Medical API page, in the Facilities section, click Patients for the Facility under which to add Patients.
  • In the Patients section, click Add.
  • Fill in the details and submit the form to add your Patient.

When you create a Patient, Metriport automatically links the Patient to all HIE data sources related to the Patient based on the demographic and/or identification information provided when creating the Patient.

In Sandbox mode, you can create Patients with pre-defined patient demographics to simulate a match and pull example clinical data - see our Sandbox guide for more details.

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5. Get Patient Medical Documents

Now, you’re able to access your Patients’ medical Documents. This involves 2 main steps:

  1. Querying for available Documents to get a list of metadata describing the available records.
  2. Downloading the Document data from the URL returned in the metadata.

To query for a Patient’s available Documents, you can either:

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Query for Documents using the API

  1. Start an asynchronous Document Query across HIEs;
  2. Then, either process the inbound Webhook message which will be sent if you have Webhooks configured, or poll the API to List Documents to get the available document references returned from HIEs.

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Query for Documents using the Dashboard

  • On the Medical API page, in the Facilities section, click Patients for the Facility where the Patient is located.
  • In the desired Patient’s row, click Documents.
  • You’ll see all available Documents in the side panel.
  • To update the list of documents from HIEs, click on Query Documents.
Not all Patients will have available Documents, but they should ~95% of the time.

Once you’ve identified the Document you want to retrieve, you can download them by either:

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Downloading a Document using the API

See the Get Document endpoint in our API reference.

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Downloading a Document using the Dashboard

  • In the side panel that comes up after clicking Documents, simply click Download on the desired Document.

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6. Get Patient FHIR Resources 🔥

As we query for Documents we will automatically convert XML C-CDA docs into FHIR resources.

Other Documents, like PDFs and images, will be left in their original format and not processed.

After the conversion from CDA to FHIR, we will store the resulting FHIR resources and make them available to be queried. This will allow you to get the necessary data you might need to better understand and treat your Patients.

To learn more on how to obtain a Patient’s resources, please see the Start Consolidated Data Query endpoint.

We also provide the ability to add any FHIR resources to a Patient with our Create Patient’s Consolidated Data endpoint.

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7. Generate Patient Medical Record Summary 📄

The aforementioned FHIR resources are generated from all available C-CDAs for a patient, resulting in a set of unique medical records. To condense all of these records into a single document, refer to the Medical Record Summary guide.

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8. Contribute Medical Data with the Networks 🏥

To uphold data quality in the networks, and improve patient health outcomes, it’s required that your organization reciprocates medical data exchange by making net-new patient clinical data available to the networks. Some examples of this include:

  • Remote patient monitoring observations such as weight and blood pressure;
  • Clinical progress notes from patient encounters;
  • Lab results

Metriport makes it easy to contribute this data back with the networks - you can:

For more details on how to contribute data back, see the Data Contribution guide.

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9. Request API access

Access to our Medical API will require you to make requests on behalf of a covered entity with an NPI number for a valid Treatment purpose of use.

To start using the Medical API for production workloads, with real patient data, you can take the following steps to request production API access:

  • In the left hand menu, click Products & Billing.
  • Click Get Started on the Medical API product.
  • Press Book an Intro Call and select a time and a date to talk to us.

After the call, we will promptly setup your account.

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Wrapping up

That’s it! 🤘

You’re now well equiped to use the Metriport API to access, manage, and exchange your Patients’ medical data.

As next steps, we’d recommend scoping out our Medical API Reference in further detail to see the other things you can do with the API.

Create Facility