Getting data out of Awell
How to work with care flow data: stream events as they happen, or query the data repository in BigQuery.
Care flow data comes out as a stream of events or as a query against the data repository, and the two answer different questions.
Stream events as they happen
Use webhooks to track events happening in Awell and send them on to Segment, Amplitude, Google Analytics, or an in-house service.
Use this when something should happen because an event occurred. It's a near-real-time push that carries identifiers rather than full records.
Query the data repository
Awell uses BigQuery as its data repository, storing and indexing care flow datasets. To query it:
- connect an external BI tool to the BigQuery datasets, or
- use BigQuery Studio to explore and visualize the data directly.
Use this to analyze across patients and time, rather than to react to one thing.
Use both, for different jobs
| Webhooks | BigQuery | |
|---|---|---|
| Shape | Push, event by event | Pull, query across everything |
| Timing | Near real-time | Batch |
| Good for | Triggering work elsewhere | Reporting, analysis, dashboards |
Don't reach for BigQuery to drive a real-time action, or for webhooks to build a report.
Next steps
Next: Get access to BigQuery.