Product overview
Alerts
Explains how Sentinel keeps a searchable ledger of every important alert, groups related alerts, and tracks whether each is seen, acknowledged or resolved.
Sentinel keeps a searchable ledger of every important alert raised in the hospital. It groups related alerts, and it tracks whether each one is seen, acknowledged or resolved.
What an alert is
An alert is a recorded signal that something needs a person's attention. A critical result, a missed dose, an insurance approval about to lapse: each raises an alert.
Every alert lands in one ledger. The ledger is the durable account of what was raised, who handled it, and how the matter closed.
The alert ledger
Sentinel holds every alert in a single searchable ledger. You search it by patient, by ward, by kind, by state and by time.
Because each alert is a durable entry rather than a passing message, the ledger answers a governance question directly: what was raised, who saw it, who acted, and when the matter closed. Each entry carries the mechanism that makes that answer true.
raisedAt timestamp Required | The moment the alert fired. |
subject reference Required | The patient, bed or case the alert concerns. |
kind string Required | The rule that raised it, such as a critical result. |
state string Required | Seen, acknowledged or resolved. |
handledBy reference | The person who acknowledged or resolved it. |
Alert states
Every alert moves through the same short lifecycle. The state tells you at a glance whether an alert still needs a person.
| State | What it means | What it asks of you |
|---|---|---|
| Raised | The rule fired and the alert entered the ledger | Someone needs to see it |
| Seen | A person has opened the alert | Decide whether to take it on |
| Acknowledged | A person has taken responsibility for it | Work the cause to a close |
| Resolved | The cause is cleared and the matter is closed | Read it later as history |
An unacknowledged alert climbs a chain over time. Read how in escalation.
Grouping related alerts
One cause often raises several alerts. Sentinel groups them, so a single cause reads as one thread rather than many separate signals.
Staff discuss the group in place and resolve it together. When you resolve the group, each alert in it closes with the same outcome, and the ledger records the group as one handled matter.
From alert to message
Sentinel decides that an alert needs to reach a person. It hands the delivery to Raven, which sends the message over the channel that person accepts.
This split keeps one clear line of responsibility. Sentinel owns whether an alert fires and how it is tracked; Raven owns how the message travels and records that it arrived.
Reading the handling history
A manager reads the ledger to see how alerts are handled over time. Each entry carries the moment it was raised, the moment it was seen, and the moment it was resolved.
From that history a manager reads how promptly a ward answers its alerts, and where an alert kind fires more often than it should. The lineage of every entry stays visible.
Common questions
What is the difference between seen and acknowledged?
Seen means a person has opened the alert. Acknowledged means a person has taken responsibility for working it to a close.
Does Sentinel send the message itself?
Sentinel decides that an alert needs to reach a person. Raven carries the message and records its delivery.
Can I find an old alert later?
Yes. Every alert is a durable entry in the ledger, searchable by patient, ward, kind, state and time.
Read how an administrator defines when an alert fires in alert rules.