How to set up your telehealth application in under 10-minutes with Beam's API

How to set up your telehealth application in under 10-minutes with Beam’s API

Drew
0
on Oct 14, 2022

The term “API First” may seem like the tech world’s newest buzz word. But in reality it represents a new and improved shift in software development. APIs are no longer simply viewed as a means for disparate applications to communicate. They have evolved to be the new building blocks of modern software. APIs allow companies to quickly develop new products and services, while vastly improving engineering efficiency and reducing overhead costs.

Beam Health has embraced this shift as the gold standard for HealthTech offerings. Our advanced suite of digital tools is now available to developers, health systems, and other virtual platforms through our powerful API. Customers now have access to the same APIs our engineering team uses to develop our industry leading digital health platform. This includes telehealth, billing, scheduling, and many more features that can be completely customized to fit any workflow, while maintaining brand recognition.

In this post I would like to quickly demonstrate how any customer can set up their own telehealth platform, complete with a patient-facing waiting room and be ready to conduct HD, HIPAA compliant virtual appointments in minutes.

Step 1: Creating a new react app

Once your console is open, execute the following command to generate a new react application:

npx create-react-app [your project name]

Step 2: Install Beam Health package from npm

After the new react instance is created, it’s time to install the Beam Health package by executing the following command:

npm install beam-health

Step 3: Change Directory

Now it’s time to update the directory with the following command:

cd [your project name]

Step 4: Open your favorite code editor

The next step is to open your code editing software and import the functions needed for telehealth, including the patient and provider side video applications. This can be accomplished with the following code:

import { connectUser, PatientVideo, ProviderVideo } from ‘beam-health’

Step 5: Declare client ID and client secret to initiate authorization

When registering as a Beam Health API user, you will be granted a unique client ID and client secret. At this point it’s time to add these into your codebase.

let auth = await connectUser (client_id, client_secret)

Step 6: Design & Craft your telehealth experience

Choose how you want the workflow to be designed. You can set up a waiting room, ask custom intake questions, collect payment, and more. It all can be done with fewer than 10 lines of code. For full documentation, check out our GitHub. Your solution might look something like this:

{this.state.active_page == ‘provider’ && <ProviderVideo waitingRoomFlag=True /> } {this.state.active_page == 'patient' && <ProviderVideo waitingRoomFlag=True /> }

Step 7: Import styling

Import our preloaded CSS file. These can be overridden with your custom specific CSS.

import 'beam/assets/index.css';

Step 8: Launch your new application

Finally, return to your console to launch your newly created telehealth application.

npm run start

And you’re done! You can now tweak the containers to customize your own branding, logos, and layout, but in under 10 minutes you have just launched a fully functional telehealth component that is ready for use by providers and patients.

I hope this blog gives you insight into how anyone can use Beam’s technology to jumpstart the development of new projects and features. And I mean anyone – even someone with no technical training like myself.