The Sandbox

The Health Gorilla Sandbox is a fully functional environment designed to simulate real-world healthcare data exchanges. It allows you to build, test, and refine your applications in a safe, controlled setting without impacting live systems.

When to Use the Sandbox

All initial implementations, new employee onboarding, feature development, and third-party integrations should begin in the sandbox before transitioning to production. This approach ensures:

• Your workflows are fully validated
• Your team gains hands-on experience with Health Gorilla APIs and tools
• Potential issues are identified early and resolved in a safe environment

Using the sandbox first minimizes errors, accelerates timelines, and ensures a smooth go-live process.

How to Access the Sandbox

1. Submit a request via our contact page. A member of the Health Gorilla team will follow up with next steps.
2. Choose Your Entry Point:

• Health Gorilla UI – A user-friendly web interface for navigating the sandbox.
• RESTful API – Full access for programmatic integration and automated testing.

Features

• Closed System: The sandbox is a closed test environment. No emails or external messages are sent. For actions like password resets that typically require email verification, contact Health Gorilla Support.
• Code Release Management: New feature releases are deployed to the sandbox first. This gives you an opportunity to test against upcoming changes before they are pushed to production.
• Network Connection for Testing: With the Use Standard P360 API setting enabled, your sandbox environment is connected to the data exchange networks, so document queries leave the sandbox and you can test sending and retrieving documents against the networks instead of against the default mock responses. Patient lookups triggered by admission, discharge, and transfer messages use the same connection. Only Patient360 record retrieval is affected: Lab Network ordering and results behave the same way in the sandbox whether or not the setting is enabled. Contact Health Gorilla to enable it for your tenant.
• Account Support: Need help with login or user setup? Contact Health Gorilla Support to reset passwords or manage sandbox accounts.

Querying for Clinical Records

• Mock Patient Data: When you create a patient in the sandbox, the system generates realistic mock clinical data. This allows you to test workflows without handling real patient information.
• Use of CCDs: Continuity of Care Documents (CCDs) are randomly assigned to sandbox patients from a predefined pool, simulating diverse and comprehensive medical histories.
• API and FHIR Queries: All Health Gorilla API and FHIR query methods are fully functional in the sandbox. Patient360 network requests are mocked by default, so record retrieval returns test data rather than results from a production data exchange network.

Using the Lab Network

• Simulate Lab Orders and Results: You can place test orders with sandbox labs and receive mock results. These are not clinically valid but are designed to verify your application’s ability to handle diagnostics workflows.
• Mock Results: Lab results returned in the sandbox are randomly generated and intended for development purposes only.

Best Practices

• Test Everything First: Use the sandbox for all new features, user training, and integrations before moving to production.
• Validate Real-World Workflows: Simulate entire workflows (e.g., patient creation → query → document download).
• Follow Security Best Practices: Even in testing, protect API tokens and avoid hardcoding credentials.

By following these best practices, you can confidently build and test your Health Gorilla integration in a risk-free environment—and get ready for your production go-live.