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Best Practice Guide - Update Stamp Based Resident Synchronisation

  • Updated

One of the methods that can be employed to keep PainChek in sync with a PCS is to use update stamp based synchronisation. That is, the synchronisation process records a value that indicates which records have been processed to date and then, on subsequent runs, it processes the records updated since that time.

The update stamp might be a date-time, or it may be a number, but in either case, the process is much the same.

The RCS is expected to update the update stamp for a resident whenever a material change occurs to the resident, including:

  • A resident is added

  • A resident is updated (this only applies to the basic details that PainChek cares about - first name, last name, gender, date-of-birth and nickname)

  • A residents avatar (photo) is updated or removed

  • The residents' admission details change - i.e. they are moved to another room or site

  • The resident is permanently discharged

This type of synchronisation process would run periodically (say every 1 to 5 minutes) and hence push the updates to PainChek in near-real-time.

Note

There is an alternative to Update Stamp based synchronisation which is discussed here: Best Practice Guide - Event-Based Resident Synchronisation

The following block shows the pseudo-code for performing update stamp based synchronisations:

def process_rcs_residents_using_timestamp():
 # Get the last recorded update stamp value
 last_update_stamp = read_update_stamp()

 # Iterate through each resident updated since last_update_stamp
 for rcs_resident in (select residents from the RCS where update_stamp > last_update_stamp):
 if rcs_resident.current_site not in whitelisted_sites:
 # skip this resident
 continue

 # Process any changes to the resident
 process_resident(rcs_resident)

 # Update the last recorded update stamp value
 if rcs_resident.update_stamp >= last_update_stamp:
 last_update_stamp = rcs_resident.update_stamp

 # Save the updated update_stamp assuming there was no errors
 if no errors:
 save_update_stamp(last_update_stamp)

Note

  • "read_update_stamp" is a function that fetches the last recorded update stamp from some form of permanent storage

  • "save_update_stamp" is a function that saves the last recorded update stamp to some form of permanent storage

  • The "process_resident" function returns an indication of success and also an indication if a retry-able error was detected (e.g. if the PainCHek API was down). For more details on the process_resident, see Best Practice Guide - The "process_resident" function

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