Next Steps

You finally have your own local CDS Services to stand up from a localhost server. You understand how to add CDS Services and know how to test them with the CDS Hooks Sandbox app. That is the bulk of the job as a service provider. But now, you can try and look at additional considerations.

1. Find a place to host your services (protected with TLS). If you want a quick and free place that will host your services, check out Heroku.
2. Validate requests. Always validate an incoming request for malformed request bodies, invalid JSON, etc.
3. Handle unexpected situations. Your service may not always get the data it needs to execute decision support. So make sure you check if you have all the data you need to proceed. Otherwise, your service should gracefully return a response to the EHR.
4. Follow documented best practices. The specification includes documentation on several best practices for CDS Services, particularly related to security. Ensure you are familiar with these and have a plan to implement them.
5. Contribute and learn from the CDS Hooks community. CDS Hooks is a specification that is always being added to and improved upon. Check out the links below to see discussions and contribute or ask questions.
   • Concerns and Issues
   • #cds hooks Zulip Stream
   • Google group

Additional: See Frequently Asked Questions