Use HL7 FHIR to modernize your applications

1. YOUR APPLICATIONS
Victor CHAI
HL7 Singapore

2. Set the context …
• Do we copy and paste the external content into our site page, or
we simply use URL link to reference the external content when we
build a web site?
• What’re the benefits?
– Prevent information proliferation, and avoid obsolete information
– There is no need to fetch all at one go, the requester can ‘follow’ the
path to navigate to the needed information, reduce the network
traffic and payload size
– Each app can focus on managing its own information, and relies on
reference to build up network of information

3. What is FHIR
• FHIR® – Fast Health Interoperable Resources
(hl7.org/fhir) – is a next generation standards
framework created by HL7
• FHIR solutions are built from a set of modular
components called “Resources”

4. FHIR Overview
• “Resource “ is unit of transactional data such
as patient or encounter data that is stored or
exchanged
• Easily accessible
– http://server.org/resources/Patient/AA1234567
endpoint
resource type
Logical ID

5. HL7 FHIR - A network of
resources
Encounter
(Resource)
Patient
(Reference)
Hospitalization
Practitioner
(Reference)
Location
(Reference)
Location
(Reference)
Participant
Location

6. Encounter Resource Definition

7. HL7 FHIR wire format
• Supports both XML and JSON
• A Human-readable wire format for ease of use by developers
• Out of box extension support

8. How easy it is to implement
FHIR

9. How is FHIR different from
HL7v2 and HL7 CDA
• Combines best features of HL7v2 and HL7CDA
– Simple to implement, easy to extend
• Defines application services syntax
– Besides payload, it also defines API for
search/create/update/delete/read resources
• Use “Profile” to create and manage data dictionary and
Conformance toolkit
– After you have implemented FHIR, you also achieved the objective of
creating data dictionary
– “Profile” resource is also used for runtime structure and value set
validation as part of the conformance toolkit

10. HL7 FHIR RESTful API

11. API Services - Search

12. Search Parameters
Search parameters for Encounter resource

13. HTTP Response Status Code

14. Resource Profile – Data Element
and Code Set definition

15. Resource Profile – Search
parameters

16. FHIR standardises and simplifies
application design
• Use HL7 FHIR as straight-
through resource API and
internal object model
• There is no intermediate
transformation

17. FHIR in Action

18. Setting up hl7-fhir project

19. Summary
• If you are keen, download the following
FHIR open source project
– http://sourceforge.net/projects/hl7-fhir/
– I am recruiting volunteer
• Learn from standards, adopt and adapt
instead of re-invent
– http://www.hl7.org/fhir

20. THANK YOU