> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://developer.suki.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Patient Summary Overview
> Start here for Patient Summary: what it is, why to use it, key capabilities, how it fits your application, and where to go next
Patient Summary provides clinicians with a concise overview of a patient's recent medical history before an upcoming appointment. It helps providers review relevant clinical context quickly, reducing the time spent navigating charts before the visit.
To use Patient Summary features, you upload the patient's FHIR data to Suki's Clinical Knowledge Graph (CKG), generate a summary asynchronously, and retrieve the completed summary for display in your application.
Patient Summary is designed for pre-visit preparation. Unlike **Ambient**, which generates clinical notes during a patient encounter, or **Dictation**, which converts speech to text, Patient Summary gives clinicians relevant patient context before the appointment begins.
## Prerequisites
Before you begin, make sure you have:
* Partner credentials from [Partner onboarding](/documentation/get-started/partner-onboarding).
* A working authentication path for Patient Summary APIs.
* Ability to generate and sign the SDP JWT required for CKG ingestion.
* FHIR R4 patient, encounter, practitioner, schedule, and history data for the appointments you want to summarize.
* Stable identifiers such as `fhir_encounter_id` and `fhir_practitioner_id`.
## What Patient Summary includes
A completed summary contains the following sections:
| Section | Description | Source |
| :------------------- | :-------------------------------------------------------- | :------------------ |
| **About this visit** | Appointment type and reason for the visit | Appointment context |
| **Summary** | A brief overview of the patient's recent clinical history | CKG |
| **Previous visits** | Short summaries of recent encounters | CKG |
| **Problems** | Active problem list | CKG |
* Patient Summaries are generated for patients with scheduled appointments on a provider's schedule. Before generating a summary, you must ingest the patient's FHIR data into CKG.
* The content, historical lookback period, and summary length depend on your implementation and configured requirements.
## Why use Patient Summary
Use Patient Summary to:
* Prepare clinicians before scheduled appointments.
* Display structured patient history in your schedule, chart, or patient profile.
* Generate summaries from FHIR data ingested into the Clinical Knowledge Graph (CKG).
* Reduce chart review time by providing a concise pre-visit overview.
## Common use cases
Use Patient Summary to support pre-visit workflows in your application.
Generate summaries for scheduled appointments and display a pre-visit preview in your schedule or appointment list.
Retrieve the full Patient Summary when a clinician opens a patient chart to review recent history before the encounter.
Generate summaries for an entire provider schedule ahead of the clinic day so they are ready when clinicians need them.
Generate a summary for a single encounter when a patient is added to the schedule or when new clinical data becomes available.
## Typical integration flow
A typical Patient Summary integration consists of these steps:
Ingest patient FHIR data into the Clinical Knowledge Graph (CKG).
Generate summaries for scheduled appointments or individual encounters.
Monitor the asynchronous generation job until it completes.
Retrieve the completed summary.
Present the summary in your application's pre-visit experience, such as a schedule view, patient chart, or appointment details page.
Your application determines when summaries are generated, how often generation is triggered, and how the retrieved summary is presented to clinicians.
## High-level architecture
```mermaid actions={false} theme={"theme":{"light":"github-dark","dark":"material-theme-darker"}}
flowchart LR
subgraph PartnerAppIngest["Partner Application"]
A["FHIR data"]
end
subgraph SukiPlatform["Suki Platform"]
B["Clinical Knowledge Graph
CKG"]
C["Patient Summary generation"]
D["Background job"]
E["Patient Summary"]
end
subgraph PartnerAppDisplay["Partner Application"]
F["Retrieve and display summary"]
end
A --> B
B --> C
C --> D
D --> E
E --> F
style A fill:#FFF394,stroke:#333,color:#000
style B fill:#FFF394,stroke:#333,color:#000
style C fill:#FFF394,stroke:#333,color:#000
style D fill:#FFF394,stroke:#333,color:#000
style E fill:#FFF394,stroke:#333,color:#000
style F fill:#FFF394,stroke:#333,color:#000
```
Patient Summary is generated using the clinical data available in the Clinical Knowledge Graph (CKG). The quality and completeness of the generated summary depend on the quality, completeness, and freshness of the data you ingest into CKG.
To learn more about the generation workflow, lifecycle, and limitations, see [How Patient Summary works](/documentation/concepts/patient-summary/architecture).
## Related guides
Lifecycle, data flow, background jobs, and summary section behavior.
Why CKG is required and how daily FHIR ingestion works.
Choose scheduled-appointment or single-encounter generation.
Step-by-step Partner API workflow from CKG upload to summary retrieval.
## Resources
Refer to these references when you are ready to integrate:
REST endpoints for ingestion, generation, jobs, and retrieval.
Staging scripts for one successful end-to-end Patient Summary path.
## Next steps
Complete the [Partner onboarding](/documentation/get-started/partner-onboarding) process and get your credentials.
Review [How Patient Summary works](/documentation/concepts/patient-summary/architecture), then [Integrate CKG](/documentation/concepts/patient-summary/integrate-ckg).
Follow [Patient Summary basic usage](/documentation/how-to/patient-summary/basic-usage) for the API workflow.