Setup

Get your development environment ready for building the ClinicalFlow service.

Install HealthChain

Create a new project directory:

mkdir clinicalflow
cd clinicalflow

Option 1: Using uv (Recommended)

uv is a fast Python package manager. If you don't have it installed, you can install it by following the instructions here.

Then initialize a project and install HealthChain:

uv init
uv add healthchain

Option 2: Using pip with a virtual environment

If you prefer using pip, create and activate a virtual environment first:

python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate  # On Windows: .venv\Scripts\activate
pip install healthchain

All the code running examples in this tutorial will show both the uv and pip versions of the commands. These are typically the same up to a factor of adding uv run at the beginning of the command.

Verify Installation

Create a file called check_install.py:

import healthchain
from healthchain.io import Document

# Test creating a simple document
doc = Document("Patient has a history of hypertension.")
print(f"Created document with {len(doc.text)} characters")

Run it:

uvpip

uv run python check_install.py

python check_install.py

You should see the following output:

Created document with 38 characters

What's Next

Now that your environment is set up, let's learn about FHIR basics - the healthcare data format you'll be working with.