Dates in Elation's Platform

Elation's platform supports storing a variety of longitudinal patient data. Here is some info about dates you'll find across the API.

Timezones

Data provided over our API should be assumed to be in UTC.

Our API accepts most ISO 8601 formats.

2023-04-04T23:30:04+00:00
2023-04-04T23:30:04Z
20230404T233004Z

And produces dates that should follow the format:

%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ

{
	...
	"document_date": "2023-04-09T18:41:23Z",
	...
}

There are some datetimes that are common across alot of Elation's API resources. It can be useful to understand what each describes.

Some specific resources will include

document_date
- The datetime this document "happened" in the world. Sometimes changeable in-app to help provider's better represent a patient's longitudinal history. Often the same as chart_date below.
- e.g. A CCDA import includes data about a visit that happened sometime in the past will have a document date that represents when that visit occurred.
chart_date
- The datetime this document appeared in the patient's chart.
- Often the same as document_date above but can be different if the document represents historical data.
signed_date
- The datetime a document was signed by a provider.
created_date
- The datetime when a resource was created in Elation's platform. Will often be the same as the chart_date and document_date above.
deleted_date
- Most resources in Elation's platform are "soft" deleted to ensure we can recover data and provide more accurate reporting.
- The datetime this resource was marked as deleted.
last_modified_date
- The datetime when this resource was last updated.