Creating patient observations

Observations are data points about a Patient at a specific point in time, such as their body weight, heart rate, or blood pressure as observed on a particular day. In Capable Health, an Observation can optionally be tied to a Target, which is used to assess whether a Goal has been reached as part of a Care Plan.

Observation types

Every Observation must be associated with an Observation Type. An Observation Type is the metadata that gives the observed value meaning. Here are two examples:

{
    "name": "Height",
    "data_type": "integer",
    "unit": "inch"
},
{
    "name": "Respiratory rate",
    "data_type": "integer",
    "unit": "per minute"
}

When creating an Observation, it must have either an observation_type_id of the relevant Observation Type or a target_id of an associated Target. If the Observation is linked to a Target, it will be attributed the Observation Type linked to that Target.

A set of common FHIR-compliant Observation Types is pre-populated for you in the Capable admin portal. We can add new ones to your system upon request.

Creating observations with questionnaires

You can create an Observation about a Patient using a Capable Health Questionnaire. To do so, add the relevant Observation Type ID to the questions that you want to generate Observations. You can do this in the Capable admin portal or via the API.

Then, when creating the Submission, pass the Observation value to the content field of the response object. An Observation will then automatically be created for the Patient, with the same date as the Submission date — no additional API calls or steps are required.