How to add additional profile fields

Last updated: 23 Jun 2025

This guide explains how to create additional fields that will appear on the patient profile demographics form. With this, you can define custom fields, and the information will be stored as patient metadata.

What you’ll learn: #

• Use the PatientMetadataCreateForm effect to display additional fields on the patient profile.
• Use the FormField class to create fields

Patient Metadata Create form plugin #

1. FormField #

To create the form, we need to specify which items will be included. For this, we use the FormField class, where we can define our inputs and their attributes.

    FormField(
        key='musicGenre',
        label='Preferred music genre',
        type=InputType.TEXT,
        required=False,
        editable=True,
    ),

2. PatientMetadataCreateFormEffect #

The next step is to add these fields to the effect so they can be used to build the form.

PatientMetadataCreateFormEffect(form_fields=[
    FormField(
        key='musicGenre',
        label='Preferred music genre',
        type=InputType.TEXT,
        required=False,
        editable=True,
    ),
    ...
]

3. The plugin #

Here’s an example of a complete plugin showcasing the different input types.

from canvas_sdk.effects import Effect
from canvas_sdk.effects.patient_metadata import PatientMetadataCreateFormEffect, InputType, FormField
from canvas_sdk.events import EventType
from canvas_sdk.handlers import BaseHandler


# Inherit from BaseHandler to properly get registered for events
class Protocol(BaseHandler):
    RESPONDS_TO = EventType.Name(EventType.PATIENT_METADATA__GET_ADDITIONAL_FIELDS)

    def compute(self) -> list[Effect]:
        form = PatientMetadataCreateFormEffect(form_fields=[
            FormField(
                key='musicGenre',
                label='Preferred music genre',
                type=InputType.TEXT,
                required=False,
                editable=True,
            ),
            FormField(
                key='occupation',
                label='Occupation',
                type=InputType.SELECT,
                required=False,
                editable=True,
                options=["Engineer", "Teacher", "Other"]
            ),
            FormField(
                key='date',
                label='Date',
                type=InputType.DATE,
                required=False,
                editable=True,
            ),
        ])

        return [form.apply()]

4. The Output #

And that’s it! Below, you can see how it will appear in the app — these fields will be stored as patient metadata.