Direct Patient Management System Integration - Sending Correspondence

This article is aimed at developers for patient management systems. If you are a developer and wish to discuss how Mediref can help integration with your product (either via an already existing API or a custom built one), please reach out to us.

Mediref has a locally installed program that practices already use to send files and documents. The program in question listens for 'open' events on files - i.e. Any file opened with Mediref, would automatically start getting uploaded to Mediref and getting ready to be sent.

The sending component also forms 95% of the desire for integration from the Mediref user base (i.e. this part alone would account for practices willing to pay for integration in the majority of cases).

What would be required from the Practice Management Software's end for integration (because of how the above is set up, the sending component of integration is straightforward):

1. A Mediref button that is available when the user is viewing documents or images
2. Clicking on the button should give the option to the user to either:
   1. ‘Send to patient’
   2. ‘Send to another practice’
3. Fire a background command prompt that opens the Mediref application and passes
   1. The file path in question to Mediref
   2. If ‘Send to patient’ is chosen, the email address of the patient as it is recorded in the patient management system. If not included, then the string “none” or an empty string should be passed instead
   3. Optional - (If available and if ‘Send to another practice’ is selected) - the email address of the practice/practitioner they are wishing to send to, if available via the PMS directory. This may be omitted entirely

Mediref can receive these parameters and handle the rest - encryption, uploading, recipient selection etc.

The order of parameters sent to Mediref is important. Below is an example of a full command (via the Command Line Interface - this can be mirrored by a practice management system or another program) that would do the following:

1. Open Mediref (if not open)
2. An empty string (or the name of the document) - This isn't too important for Mediref (it's more for Windows with regards to Task titles in their Jump List). However the argument itself must be present to maintain the order/index of all subsequent arguments
3. Provide Mediref with a path to the location of a file to be sent out via Mediref (in this case, called example.pdf however that can be anything)
4. Provide the name of the patient - in this case 'Nicola Tester' *
5. Provide the email of the patient - nicola@tester.com.au *
6. Provide the email of the recipient practice - In this case, MedirefHQ, info@mediref.com.au *

Note that all arguments are wrapped in quotation marks. If this is not done, then ensure any space characters are escaped accordingly.

This will open Mediref, begin uploading the example.pdf file)

* The Mediref build that currently allows and takes in these arguments is not currently available via our standard downloads page. Please contact us for a copy of the correct installer.