How to monitor healthcare and medical news#

To monitor healthcare and medical news, query /v1/news/everything and narrow it with a subject filter — a title keyword or an IPTC category.id — then layer on language.code, a published_at window and newest-first sorting. There is no dedicated healthcare endpoint: you assemble a medical-news feed from the shared filter chain, escalate to entity filters like disease.name and organization.name for precise tracking, and point the same filters at the /v1/news/stream SSE feed when you need coverage pushed live.

curl "https://api.apitube.io/v1/news/everything?title=healthcare&language.code=en&sort.by=published_at&sort.order=desc" \
  -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY"

You can send the key as an X-API-Key header or as the api_key query parameter, and call the endpoint with GET (query parameters) or POST (JSON body). Different parameters combine with AND, so each filter you add narrows the medical feed further.

How do you pull a broad healthcare news feed?#

Start with a subject filter. The simplest is a title keyword — title=vaccine or title=clinical%20trial — which matches whole tokens in the article headline and must be 2 to 100 characters (a value outside that range returns ER0007). Results are sorted newest-first by default (sort.by=published_at, sort.order=desc); switch to sort.by=relevance to rank by how well the headline matches your keywords.

For a whole subject area rather than one word, use category.id with an IPTC media-topic code. Category codes look like medtop:15000000 and are validated against the categories APITube tracks, so an unknown code stops the request with ER0206. Do not guess a health code — look it up first with the suggest endpoint, whose id is exactly what category.id expects:

curl "https://api.apitube.io/v1/suggest/categories?prefix=health&api_key=YOUR_API_KEY"

See how to filter news by category for the full rules, including combining up to three codes with OR logic.

How do you narrow medical news to a country and time window?#

Add source.country.code (a two-letter code such as us or gb, up to three comma-separated) to keep only publishers from a country, and a published_at window to scope the feed in time. published_at.start and published_at.end accept absolute dates like 2026-06-01 or Solr-style relative values such as NOW-7DAYS and NOW-1WEEK:

curl "https://api.apitube.io/v1/news/everything?title=hospital&source.country.code=us&published_at.start=NOW-7DAYS&per_page=250" \
  -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY"

per_page defaults to 100 and maxes out at 250 (a larger value returns ER0171); walk deeper with page. On the Free plan, paging stops after the first 5 pages (ER0173), so use a paid plan for wide historical sweeps. An unknown country code returns ER0212.

How do you track a specific disease, drug maker or health body?#

Keyword search matches text; entity filters match the tagged thing itself, which is far cleaner for tracking a named disease or organization. Use disease.name for illnesses and outbreaks (entity type disease) and organization.name for a specific health body or company (entity type organization). Each accepts up to three comma-separated names, 1 to 120 characters, with OR logic:

curl "https://api.apitube.io/v1/news/everything?disease.name=Influenza,Measles&published_at.start=NOW-14DAYS" \
  -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY"

The name must match an entity APITube already tracks, or the request stops — an unknown disease.name returns ER0226 and an unknown organization.name returns ER0220. Resolve the exact spelling and type first with GET /v1/suggest/entities?prefix= (a missing prefix returns ER0346); each result carries an id, name and type, and that numeric id also works directly as entity.id. For a worked outbreak feed, see how to track disasters and disease outbreaks.

How do you surface negative or high-risk medical coverage?#

For safety and reputation work you often want only the coverage with a negative tone. Add sentiment.overall.polarity=negative to keep articles the pipeline scored as negative overall (it accepts positive, negative or neutral). To measure the tone expressed toward a tracked entity — a drug, a hospital chain — instead of the whole article, use entity.sentiment.polarity (positive, negative or neutral; an invalid value returns ER0290) alongside the entity selector.

Because medical misinformation is a real risk, tighten the feed to trustworthy publishers with is_verified_source=1, which keeps only higher-ranked sources and drops duplicates:

curl "https://api.apitube.io/v1/news/everything?organization.name=World%20Health%20Organization&sentiment.overall.polarity=negative&is_verified_source=1" \
  -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY"

How do you find trending health topics?#

To see what is rising in health coverage rather than a flat list of articles, call /v1/news/trends with field=topic.id (or field=entity.id). It groups matching articles and returns each value with a count, and adding trending=true computes a trending score by comparing recent volume against the trailing window:

curl "https://api.apitube.io/v1/news/trends?field=topic.id&title=health&trending=true&api_key=YOUR_API_KEY"

The trends endpoint runs the same filter chain, so every filter above applies. It returns up to 100 results per request, looks back at most 30 days, and each call counts as one request. See how to discover trending topics and entities for the full trends reference.

How do you get medical news in real time?#

Polling everything returns what already exists; a live health desk needs push. Keep the exact same filters and open the Server-Sent Events stream at /v1/news/stream — it runs the same filter chain and pushes each new matching article as it is indexed:

curl -N "https://api.apitube.io/v1/news/stream?disease.name=Influenza&language.code=en" \
  -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY"

The stream only sends articles that appear after you connect. If you would rather have APITube POST new coverage to your own endpoint, create a webhook — that is set up in the dashboard, not over the API. See how to stream news in real time with SSE, and the full parameter list in the News API parameters reference.

Common Questions#

• Is there a dedicated healthcare or medical endpoint?
• How do I find the right health category code?
• Should I use a keyword or disease.name to track an illness?
• Do these healthcare queries cost extra?

Is there a dedicated healthcare or medical endpoint?#

No. Healthcare monitoring uses the same /v1/news/everything endpoint and the same title, category.id, disease.name, organization.name, sentiment.* and published_at filters as any other subject. You define what counts as medical news with those filters — there is no separate healthcare route.

How do I find the right health category code?#

Call GET /v1/suggest/categories?prefix=health (or another subject word such as medicine). Each result returns an id in the IPTC form medtop:... that you drop straight into category.id — no conversion needed. A missing prefix returns ER0346, and passing a code APITube does not track to category.id returns ER0206.

Should I use a keyword or disease.name to track an illness?#

Use disease.name. A title keyword matches the word in the headline, which can miss articles that name the illness only in the body or catch unrelated uses of the word. disease.name matches the tagged disease entity itself (type disease), so it returns coverage about the illness. Resolve the exact name through /v1/suggest/entities?prefix= before filtering, because an unknown name returns ER0226.

Do these healthcare queries cost extra?#

No filter costs extra — disease.name, sentiment.overall.polarity, is_verified_source and the rest are part of one request. A call to /v1/news/everything counts as a request, and a /v1/news/trends call counts as one request too. Streaming over /v1/news/stream draws from a separate streaming quota, where each delivered article counts against that pool rather than your normal request credits.