Integrating Zoom Into Your EMR Platform

Before diving into the details, let’s get a high level view of how the integration works. A system admin will first install/setup Zoom’s Epic integration and then configure the EMR system with information needed to enable video visits. When video visits are scheduled, patient and provider URLs are automatically created. When it’s time, the patient and provider use these URLs to join the video visit powered by Zoom.

Notifications are sent by Zoom to the EMR system indicating when the patient and provider joins and leaves the video visit. These notifications can be used by the EMR system to let a provider know when a patient has joined the meeting as well as for reporting purposes.

Let’s now explore what’s needed to integrate Zoom with your EMR platform.

Your app needs to create URLs that lets patients and providers join Zoom video visit meetings. These URLs can be exposed any way you like — a “Join Meeting” button on a patient portal, a link contained in a calendar invite or email, or any other way that makes sense for your app.

Here’s the URL format:

{Encrypted Data} is comprised of several pieces of information that’s grouped together and encrypted. To construct it, first create the following string of parameters with the appropriate values:

usertype={user type}&sessionid={session ID}&userid={user ID}&firstname={first name}&lastname={last name}&email={email}

{user type} — Set to:

{session ID} — Set to any value that uniquely identifies the video visit meeting, but it must be the same in the URLs used by all patients and providers in the same meeting.

{user ID} — Set to any value that uniquely identifies the patient/provider — e.g. patient record number, provider employee number, etc.

{first name} — (optional) Set to patient/provider’s first name.

{last name} — (optional) Set to patient/provider’s last name.

{email} — (optional) By default, Zoom automatically creates new Zoom accounts for the providers and patients when the Telehealth meeting starts. In some cases, providers (and possibly patients) may already have a Zoom accounts that should be used for the video visit rather than creating a new one. This can be done by setting the value of this parameter to the email address of the Zoom account.

5. Save the API Key and API Secret (click the eye image to view the secret) to be used in later steps

Let’s go through an example to see how to encrypt and encode the Zoom video visit URL “data” parameter. Start with the following example unencrypted data string:

usertype=2&sessionid=98765&userid=3100312345&firstname=Ed&lastname=Mercer

Using the indicated values, the encrypted result would be:

FW3QZV5fKIT9KiGH4eEhPZIvJzLy9UIbRWE9AzkDy48o6gIzhOrfmR3LRaaVeadRUczKlxeQNJT8/3ZaS8arH+fL/iYdRs4zrGiOWxD78eA=

FW3QZV5fKIT9KiGH4eEhPZIvJzLy9UIbRWE9AzkDy48o6gIzhOrfmR3LRaaVeadRUczKlxeQNJT8%2F3ZaS8arH%2BfL%2FiYdRs4zrGiOWxD78eA%3D

Now that we have the encrypted and URL encoded data parameter, let’s complete constructing the Zoom video visit URL. First start with the URL format:

Adding in the Zoom API key and the encrypted data, we now have the completed URL:

That’s it! A patient would be able to use this URL to join a Zoom video visit meeting with a provider.

If needed, your application can receive notifications when patients and providers join and leave Zoom video visits. For example, your app can provide a visual indication to a provider when a patient has joined the video visit and is waiting. Zoom needs to know where to send the notifications so customers must configure the notification endpoint URL in the Epic integration configuration page. Your application or documentation should let customers know how to determine the endpoint URL.

Once the notification endpoint URL is configured, notifications will be sent to the URL in an HTTP GET request:

{Your App’s Endpoint URL}?ExternalIDType={External ID Type}&VendorName=Zoom&ExternalID={External ID}&ConferenceID={Conference ID}&ConnectionStatus={Connection Status}

Customers will have the option to enable basic authorization for the notification. If they do, your app should authorize the notifications before accepting them. The authorization string will be contained in an Authorization header — for example:

Authorization: Basic am9obmxhbWFyQHRoZW9ydmlsbGUuY29tOnJ1bmZyb210aGVrYXlsb25z

johnlamar@theorville.com:runfromthekaylons

“johnlamar@theorville.com” is the username and “runfromthekaylons” is the password. If a valid username and password authenticates successfully, your app should respond with a 200 OK. Otherwise it should response with a 401 Unauthorized.

Zoom video visits are available for anyone to use at no additional cost. All you need is a paid Zoom account with enough host licenses (Pro or Corp) for the providers, plus 1 additional which is used to temporarily “host” video visits when a patient joins before a provider.

As you can see from the structure of the video visit URL, patient and provider privacy is maintained. Provider and patient first name, last name, and email are optional. First and last name is only used for display purposes during the video visit and is not saved or shared by Zoom. Email is only used to find the patient or provider’s Zoom account if requested by your app.

Each Zoom video visit meeting URL is encrypted and secured to prevent anyone else from joining, even when the meeting ID is known. All video and audio traffic is AES 256 encrypted end to end. You can also disable recording and annotation on the customer’s Zoom account for additional privacy.

As previously mentioned, video visit joined/left notifications can be secured using basic authentication (certificate-based authentication will also be supported in a later release).

Related posts:

Sebelum membahas Hitler, saya ingin sedikit bercerita darimana saya mendapatkan dan memutuskan ide menulis dengan judul seperti ini. Jean Paul Sartre, seorang filsuf eksistensialisme — salah satu…

Volley is a one-stop shop for decentralized finance, cross-chain exchange, staking, earning and earning farming on the Ethereum Blockchain. Volley created a DeFi ecosystem to make DeFi items more…

Do you want to know what your employees think of you? Then you can check out employee rating websites like Glassdoor; You may be surprised. In today’s competitive job market, you will not be able to…