Clinical Sources (EHR)

A clinical source is a connection from your Medipal instance to a hospital information system. Once one is connected, clinicians can find patients in the hospital record, link them to Medipal profiles, and see clinical data next to questionnaire results, without leaving the web app.

What a clinical source provides

Capability	Description
Patient search	Search the hospital system by national health number, hospital patient ID, or by name and date of birth.
Patient linking	Create a Medipal patient from a hospital match, or link an existing profile. The hospital identifiers are stored with the profile.
Demographics refresh	Name, date of birth and contact details are refreshed from the source periodically and on demand.
Clinical view	Observations, conditions, medications, encounters and appointments, read live from the source.
Analytics	Clinical values can be used as dataset columns and combined with questionnaire scores. See Analytics.
Workflow input	Automations can read a patient's latest clinical values when deciding what to do. See Workflows.

Medipal reads from the source; it never writes to the hospital record.

Supported systems

Kind	Connection	Typical use
HL7 FHIR R4 over REST	A FHIR server endpoint with a bearer token	Hospital EHRs and integration engines that expose a FHIR API
FHIR data lake	A relational copy of FHIR resources	Analytics platforms that replicate the EHR into a database
OMOP Common Data Model	An OMOP CDM database	Research data warehouses

Which searches and resources are available depends on what the connected system advertises. Search criteria the system does not support are ignored rather than causing an error.

Registering a source

Registering a source is an administrator or integrator task, normally performed once per instance. The credential (an access token or file-based secret) is stored in the Vault and referenced from the source configuration, so it is never shown in the interface again.

A source carries:

Field	Purpose
Name and organisation	How the source appears in search results ("Source" column).
Kind and connection type	Which of the supported systems it is.
Endpoint and credential	Where to connect and the vault reference for the token.
Organisation identifier system	The namespace of the patient identifier the hospital uses (for example a national health number). This decides how the "Patient ID" field is labelled in search.
Enabled	Disabled sources are skipped by search, refresh and the clinical view.

Step-by-step setup and connection parameters are covered in EHR Connectors.

Finding and linking a patient

1. On the Patients page choose Search EHR (or Add Patient from EHR).
2. Enter an identifier, or a given name, family name and date of birth. The identifier field is labelled after the source's identifier system (for example SNS Number).
3. Review the results. Each shows the source it came from, the identifier, and flags such as Already enrolled or Deceased.
4. Choose Enroll to create the Medipal profile (or View patient when a profile already exists).

Linked patients show an EHR badge on the patient page with the time of the last sync. The link can be refreshed on demand from the same header.

The Clinical tab

The patient page gains a Clinical tab once the patient is linked. It has five views:

View	Columns
Observations	Test, value, interpretation (high, low, normal, abnormal), reference range, date, status
Conditions	Condition, clinical status, verification status, onset, recorded
Medications	Medication, dosage, status, prescribed date
Encounters	Type (outpatient, inpatient, emergency, home visit), reason, status, start, end
Appointments	Date, end, practitioner, status

Each clinical code shows its coding system and code and can be copied. Lists are paged and can be refreshed from the source.

Patients who are not linked see a Link to EHR prompt instead of the tables.

Permissions

Viewing the Clinical tab requires patient read rights. Searching and linking require patient write rights. Registering or changing a source requires clinical-source management rights, which are excluded from the standard clinician role. See Users, Roles & Scopes.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Likely cause	What to do
"No clinical source is connected"	No enabled source on the instance	Ask an administrator to register or enable one.
Search returns nothing for a known patient	The identifier namespace does not match, or the source does not support the search field used	Try name and date of birth; check the source's identifier system with your administrator.
Clinical tab is empty after linking	The source has no data for that patient, or the token has expired	Refresh from the header; if it persists, rotate the credential in the Vault.
Data looks outdated	The last sync predates the change	Use the refresh action; the sync time is shown in the header.
A value is marked "Abnormal" but has no range	The source did not provide a reference range	This is expected; interpretation comes from the source.