Medical app backend and database

What a medical app backend and its database must handle, which parts Anpheros provides as a managed healthcare database, what stays in your backend, three ways to connect, and how to stay in sync with webhooks.

A medical app backend is the server side of a healthcare application: it stores patient data, enforces who may see it, keeps a history of changes and talks to labs, clinics and other services. With Anpheros, the medical part of that backend — the healthcare database that holds each patient's record, with its history, consent, provenance, audit, lab import and events — is provided by the platform through an API, and your own backend keeps only what is specific to your product.

What a medical backend has to handle

What stays in your backend

• your users and accounts, and the mapping from each user to their Anpheros patient id (the pairwise id your project sees);
• product data that is not medical: settings, subscriptions, content, reminders' schedules;
• business rules — which of your staff may see which patient in your product;
• the API key, which must never be shipped inside a mobile or web app.

Three ways to connect

1. Your backend holds the API key (most common). Your app calls your backend; your backend calls Anpheros with an sk_live_ key and sees the patients your project created.

import { Anpheros, apiKey } from '@anpheros/sdk';
const anpheros = new Anpheros({ auth: apiKey(process.env.ANPHEROS_KEY!) });

// GET /api/me/vitals in your backend, after your own authentication
export async function myVitals(user: { anpherosPatientId: string }) {
  const page = await anpheros.observations.list(user.anpherosPatientId, { category: 'vital-signs', limit: 50 });
  return page.data;
}

2. The app acts for the patient with OAuth. For people who already have an Anpheros record, a mobile or web app is a public OAuth client with PKCE: the person consents on the hosted page and the app receives a 30-minute access token and a rotating refresh token for that one record. The SDKs implement the flow (OAuthFlow).

3. Server-to-server partners. A confidential client (with a secret, kept on a server) can use the authorization-code flow, or client_credentials, which behaves like an API key for that project.

Keeping your backend in sync

Subscribe to webhooks instead of polling. Deliveries are signed (Anpheros-Signature, HMAC-SHA256 over timestamp and body), at-least-once and possibly out of order; de-duplicate by event id and ignore stale versions.

import { verifyWebhookSignature } from '@anpheros/sdk';

app.post('/anpheros/hook', express.raw({ type: 'application/json' }), async (req, res) => {
  const ok = await verifyWebhookSignature({ secret: process.env.ANPHEROS_WEBHOOK_SECRET!, header: req.header('anpheros-signature'), body: req.body });
  if (!ok) return res.status(400).end();
  const event = JSON.parse(req.body.toString());   // ids and versions only — read the resource if you need it
  res.status(204).end();
});

Handling errors and limits

• Treat 404 as "not visible to you", never as proof that a record does not exist.
• 403 means the credential exists but may not do this — a missing scope, or a resource written by another organisation.
• 429 comes with Retry-After; the SDKs wait and retry automatically, as they do for 5xx.
• Keep the Anpheros-Request-Id of failed calls for support.

Errors · Limits and rate limits

Frequently asked questions

What database should a medical app use?

One that keeps medical data in a standard, versioned form and controls access per patient. Anpheros is a managed healthcare database built on HL7 FHIR R4: each patient's record is versioned and searchable, every write carries provenance, and an application sees a patient only if it created the record or the patient consented. Your own database keeps the rest of your product's data — accounts, billing, content.

Is there a free database for medical apps?

Yes. The Anpheros sandbox is free: sign in with Google, get a key in one click, and your project gets its own 30 synthetic patients and up to 10 000 writes a day. Production starts at €49 a month for 2,500 patients, with the first month free; production access is for verified organisations with a signed data processing agreement. See Pricing.

Can I keep real patient data in the free sandbox?

No. The sandbox is for synthetic data only: each sandbox project gets its own synthetic patients, and sandbox keys cannot reach production. Real patient records belong in a production project.

Related

• Healthcare software development
• Build a healthcare app
• Architecture
• Medical data API
• SDKs