Vital provides a way to schedule your orders for a future date, both via the API and via the Vital Dashboard. A Scheduled order is one that will only be fulfilled in the future, so it won’t be created in the Partner Laboratories until the defined date. This is useful for defining follow-up orders after placing an initial Lab Order for a patient.

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Ordering through the API

To place a scheduled order through the API, you should use the Create Order endpoint, passing the activate_by date parameter. The activate_by parameter defines when that order is scheduled for, and it will move from the ordered to the requisition_created status when the date arrives. If you want to query all placed orders, you may use Get Orders endpoint, passing an order_activation_types query parameter, which accept the following values ["current", "scheduled"].
  • If the parameter is not provided, every order is returned.
  • If current is provided, orders with a null activate_by date or with activate_by set before the current date are returned.
  • If scheduled is provided, orders with an activate_by date greater than the current date are returned.
Placing a scheduled order for 6 of January of 2025 would look like this:
Placing a Scheduled Order request
{
  "user_id": "3fa85f64-5717-4562-b3fc-2c963f66afa6",
  "patient_details": {
    "dob": "2022-07-06T22:20:26.796Z",
    "gender": "male | female",
    "email": "test@test.com"
  },
  "patient_address": {
    "receiver_name": "John Doe",
    "street": "Hazel Road",
    "street_number": "102",
    "city": "San Francisco",
    "state": "CA",
    "zip": "91789",
    "country": "U.S.",
    "phone_number": "+14158180852"
  },
  "lab_test_id": "3fa85f64-5717-4562-b3fc-2c963f66afa6",
  "physician": {
    "first_name": "John",
    "last_name": "Doe",
    "email": "john@doe.com",
    "npi": "123456789",
    "licensed_states": ["CA", "NY"],
    "created_at": "2022-07-06T22:20:26.796Z",
    "updated_at": "2022-07-06T22:20:26.796Z"
  },
  "activate_by": "2025-01-06"
}

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Ordering through the Vital Dashboard

To place a Scheduled Order through the dashboard, just follow the normal procedure until you reach the Lab Testing selection screen.

Select Lab Test.

Notice that there is a checkbox for defining this order as scheduled for the future, after the checkbox is selected you can pass in the desired scheduled date. After that, you can filter out the Scheduled and Current orders in the dashboard using the filter in the orders listing.

Order List filter.