Releases and updates

Who this page is for: the practice manager who has been burned by a practice-software “upgrade” before.

Refera is cloud-managed, so most updates happen centrally. The standard is not “move fast”; the standard is a verified release that preserves the administrative boundary - administrative process-state only, Refera performs no clinical triage - along with the data wall and the practice’s working day.

Security fixes first

Validated security fixes are patched the same day where possible. Product improvements are batched into deliberate releases so practices are not hit by constant interface churn.

Every release is gated

Before deploy, Refera runs the product test suite, desktop and mobile verification, and a full scripted walk against private patient-free fixtures. The scripted walk is local release evidence and is never deployed as a prospect journey. After deploy, Refera probes the live ECS portal, the public site, documentation and canonical security boundaries. A release is not done until the ECS tasks, load-balancer targets and deployed surfaces report the expected commit and pass their live checks.

Rollback is built in

Deployments are kept as discrete, versioned releases. The licensed portal/API rolls back to the previous proven ECS task revision; public surfaces roll back to their previous versioned edge release. A failed post-deploy check cannot silently promote a candidate.

Native apps

The direct AWS web app and installed PWA are the production desktop and mobile path. The iOS and Android projects are unpublished test shells, not practice builds. Their store gate stays closed until connected native authentication, AWS APNs/FCM delivery, signing and physical-device tests are complete. An OS permission is never presented as proof of notification delivery.

Where releases are published

Every release that goes live is listed on the Changelog, newest first, with a plain note when it changes something the practice will notice. The list is regenerated from Refera’s release record and checked by the release gate before each release.