CDS Hooks
Surface guidance as a native card at the right moment in the clinician's workflow.
CDS Hooks is the pattern for returning concise, contextual cards into the EHR workflow. Instead of launching a full app first, your service can respond when the clinician opens a chart, signs an order, or reaches another supported moment in the EHR.
Use it when the best experience is a short recommendation, status, warning, or next action shown in the clinician’s existing screen.
What a card can do
A CDS card can point to relevant information, summarize a model output, open a SMART app for deeper review, or suggest an action for the clinician to consider. The EHR owns the final presentation, but your service owns the logic behind the recommendation.
Medblocks helps with the connection setup and the EHR-facing URLs. Your service can stay focused on deciding what to return for the patient and workflow context.
How the flow works
- The EHR calls the CDS Hooks URL configured for your workspace.
- Medblocks receives the request with the patient and workflow context.
- Medblocks forwards the request to your CDS endpoint when your connection is configured to do so.
- Your service returns CDS cards.
- The EHR renders those cards inside the clinician workflow.
If the recommendation needs a richer interface, the card can link into a SMART App Launch experience.
What to configure
In Configure Clinical Workflows, add your CDS endpoint and share the generated CDS Hooks URL with the EHR administrator. For Epic, the same connection page also keeps the SMART launch values close by, since most products use the two patterns together.
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