Certification & Go-Live
From sandbox testing to production credentials — the ABDM certification process.
Certification is how NHA verifies your implementation before production access. It is milestone-based and conducted against published functional test scenarios.
The process
Complete sandbox development
Implement and self-test all scenarios for the milestone(s) you're certifying. Script them — you'll repeat them many times.
Request certification
Apply through the sandbox portal / integration team, declaring your product, roles (HIP/HIU), milestones, and supported HI types.
Functional demonstration
Walk through the test scenarios with the certification team (screen-share sessions are common). They verify behaviour, error handling, and — for M2/M3 — FHIR conformance and encryption correctness.
Receive certificate & onboard to production
On passing, you receive milestone certificates and can apply for production credentials and bridge registration. Facility onboarding (HFR linkage) happens per deployment.
What reviewers consistently check
- Error handling — wrong OTPs, expired transactions, revoked consents, gateway timeouts. Happy-path-only implementations fail.
- Data hygiene — no over-matching in discovery, no data leaks across patients, purge jobs actually running.
- FHIR conformance — bundles validate against NRCeS profiles for every declared HI type.
- Patient experience — care context display names, timely PHR notifications, clear consent request descriptions.
Keep evidence
Keep logs/recordings of your certification runs and the version of the test-scenario document you certified against. API versions and scenario lists change; grandfathering rules are announced via the sandbox portal.
Staying current
- Watch the sandbox portal announcements for API deprecations (e.g. v2 → v3 migrations).
- Major product changes to certified flows may require re-certification.
- Production incidents involving consent violations are treated seriously — build compliance monitoring, not just features.