A Cortex organisation includes four environments: Production, Training, QA, and Development. All four are accessed through the same URL — the environment is selected at login. User accounts are configured once in Production and apply across all environments; access to each environment is controlled via the Environment Access settings on the user's account. Each environment has its own Access Roles, which controls the permissions for the user for that environment.
Each environment also maintains its own separate data, integrations, configuration, forms, and workflows. The only shared element is user account setup.
Production
The live environment used for day-to-day clinical operations. Production contains real patient data, active form designs, and live workflows. HL7 integrations (ADT and ORU feeds) and Data Stream connections to external systems operate in this environment. All configuration changes should be validated in a lower environment before being applied here.
QA (Quality Assurance)
The staging environment used to validate configuration changes and test integrations before they are promoted to Production. QA can be configured with its own HL7 and Data Stream endpoints, typically connected to test instances of hospital systems (e.g., a test PAS). Changes follow a promotion path from Development to QA before being applied in Production and Training.
Development
Used by both Sense Medical engineers and organisation administrators to build and test new features, form designs, and workflow configurations. Development is the first environment in the promotion path — changes are made and iterated on here before being moved to QA for validation.
Training
A dedicated environment for staff onboarding and training. Training contains sample or demonstration data and is kept separate from the live clinical workflow. Configuration changes are promoted to Training from QA alongside Production, ensuring the training environment reflects the current Production setup. Training does not have live integrations.
Change Promotion Path
The recommended path for promoting configuration changes across environments is:
Development → QA → Production and Training
Environment Access
User access to each environment is managed in the Cortex web admin under the user account settings. When creating or editing a user, administrators select which environments the user can access via the Environment Access checkboxes (Production, Training, QA, Development).