FHIR Tutorial - Morning

© 2012 HL7 ® International. Licensed under Creative Commons. HL7 & Health Level Seven are registered trademarks of Health Level Seven International. Reg. U.S. TM Office.
HL7 FHIR Training
course
Ewout Kramer
March 2014
Name (SSID):
Password:

Who am I?
 Name: Ewout Kramer
 Company: Furore, Amsterdam
 Background:
 FHIR core team, RIMBAA
 Software developer & healthcare
architect
 Contact:
 e.kramer@furore.com
 www.thefhirplace.com

Introduce ourselves
 About your organization…
 HL7 (v2/v3) background?
 How did you hear about FHIR?
 Platform of choice (.NET, Java, Ruby, …)?
 Familiar with HTTP, Xml, JSON, REST?
 Persistence technologies used?

Morning program
 Introduction to FHIR
 the Resource and REST
 Exercise #1
 Deconstructing the FHIR data model
 Exercise #2
 LUNCH

INTRODUCTION TO FHIR

Relative – No technology can make integration as fast as we’d like
That’s why we’re here
Building blocks – more on these to follow

“How can I get data from my
server to my iOS app?”
“How do I connect my applications
using cloud storage?”
“How can I give record-based
standardized access to my PHR?”
The Need

© 2012 HL7 ® International. Licensed under Creative Commons. HL7 & Health Level Seven are registered trademarks of Health Level Seven International. Reg. U.S. TM Office.8
Highrise

FHIR Manifesto
 Focus on implementers
 Keep common scenarios simple
 Leverage existing technologies
 Provide human readability
 Make content freely available
 Demonstrate best practice governance

Implementer Focus
 Specification is written for one target audience:
implementers
 Rationale, modeling approaches, etc. kept elsewhere
 Multiple reference implementations from day 1
 Publicly available test servers
 Starter APIs published with spec
 Delphi, C#, Java – more to come
 Connectathons to verify specification approaches
 Instances you can read and understand 
 Lots of examples (and they’re valid too)
using HL7.Fhir.Instance.Model;
using HL7.Fhir.Instance.Parsers;
using HL7.Fhir.Instance.Support;
XmlReader xr = XmlReader.Create(
new StreamRead
IFhirReader r = new XmlFhirReader
// JsonTextReader jr = new JsonTe
// new StreamRead
// IFhirReader r = new JsonFhirRe
ErrorList errors = new ErrorList(
LabReport rep = (LabReport)Resour
Assert.IsTrue(errors.Count() == 0

WHAT’S IN THE BOX?

Patient Prescription
Resources

Cover all usecases -
(n)ever
13
HL7v3 RIM
Generic
HL7 CDA
C-CCD
openEHR RM
HL7v2
IHE PDQ
FHIR
Specific
openEHR
Archetypes
openEHR
Templates
HL7v3
CMETS

The 80/20 rule
 Design for the 80%, not 100%
 Only include data elements in the artifacts if 80%
of all implementers of that artifact will use the data
element
 Allow easy extension for the remaining 20%
of elements
 which often make up 80% of current specs
 Vocabulary approach to extension definition

Kinds of Resources
 Administrative Concepts
 Patient, Organization, Device, Location
 Clinical Concepts
 Allergy, Condition, Medication, Family History
 Care Plan
 Infrastructure Functionality
 Document, Message, Conformance/Profiling

+ =
Extensibility

The Case for Extensions
 Simple choice – design for absolutely
everything or allow extensions
 Everyone needs extensions, everyone
hates them
 Define, publish, find extensions
 Repository
 Documented just like resources
 Can be fetched & interpreted by clients

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json;charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 627
Content-Location: /fhir/person/@1/history/@1
Last-Modified: Tue, 29 May 2012 23:45:32 GMT
ETag: "1“
"Person":{"id":{"value":"1"},"identifier":[{"type":{"co
de":"ssn","system":"http://hl7.org/fhir/sid
Transport

Just follow the industry...
 Exchanges use XML & JSON
 Collections represented using ATOM
 Same technology that gives you your daily news
summary
 Out-of-the-box publish/subscribe
 Support for REST: Web calls work the same
way they do for Facebook & Twitter
 Rely on HTTPS, OAuth, etc. for security
functions

Paradigms
 FHIR supports 4 interoperability paradigms
REST Documents
Messages Services

Cross-paradigms
 Regardless of paradigm the content is the same
 This means it’s straight-forward to share content
across paradigms
 E.g. Receive a lab result in a message. Package
it in a discharge summary document
 It also means constraints can be shared across
paradigms
 E.g. Define a profile for Blood Pressure and use it
on resources in messages, documents, REST and
services

DESIGN OF THE
RESOURCE
Looking at FHIR Resources from a software engineering perspective

Resources
 “Resources” are:
 Small logically discrete units of exchange
 Defined behaviour and meaning
 Known identity / location
 Smallest unit of transaction
 “of interest” to healthcare
 V2: Sort of like Segments
 V3: Sort of like CMETs

What is/isn’t a Resource?
Examples
 Administrative
 Patient, Location, Encounte
r, Organization,
 Clinical Concepts
 AllergyIntolerance, Questio
nnaire, Observation
 Infrastructure
 Document, Message, Profil
e, Conformance
Non-examples
 Gender
 Too small
 Blood Pressure
 Too specific
 Pregnancy
 Too broad
 Electronic Health Record
 Too big

Resource
Narrative
Elements
ExtensionsExtensions
Structure of a Resource
Metadata

Structure of a Resource
(XML example)

Human Readable
 CDA taught HL7 a very important lesson
 Even if the computers don’t understand 99% of
what you’re sending, that’s ok if they can properly
render it to a human clinician
 This doesn’t just hold for documents –
important for messages, services, etc.
 In FHIR, every resource is required to
have a human-readable expression
 Can be direct rendering or human entered

Resources in the spec
Let’s take a look at some Resources in
the specification….

Composition vs. reference
 FHIR makes composition and references
explicit:
 References are in between Resources. No
context conduction across references – safe
retrieval as individual resources.
 Composition is within a Resource: Components
have no meaning outside resource, no identity, no
separate access path except through resource

Composition of a Resource
Resource Root
Resource Component
Simple & Complex
elements (may be
repeating)

Composition

Resource Reference
Example: part of DiagnosticReport

Network
subject
performer
organization

Not a hierarchy!
Patient
Episode Episode
VisitVisit
Observation Order
Not an “electronic” version of a patient file…

Resource Aggregate
“How do we know where an object
made up of other objects begins
and ends?”
“In any system with persistent storage
of data, there must be a scope for a
transaction that changes data and a way of
maintaining the consistency of the data”

“Business” identifiers

A Resource’s identity
 In fact: an URL
 http://server.org/fhir/Patient/1
endpoint
resource type
identifier

Patient
MRN 22234
“Ewout Kramer”
30-11-1972
Amsterdam
Resource metadata
Metadata
Resource Identities
http://fhir.hl7.org/Patient/23E455A3B
http://fhir.hl7.org/Patient/23E455A3B/_history/4
Last updated
2013-12-23T23:33:01+01:00
http://hl7.org/fhir/tag/profile
http://hl7.org/fhir/Profile/us-core
http://hl7.org/fhir/tag
http://example.org/fhir/Status#Test

REST SERVICE INTERFACE
How FHIR uses RESTful principles to communicate Resources

Paradigms
 FHIR supports 4 interoperability paradigms
REST Documents
Messages Services
REST

The Glory of REST
Source: http://martinfowler.com/articles/richardsonMaturityModel.html

REST?
 “REpresentational State Transfer”
 Represent your data as “resources”
 Make “Resources” URI addressable
 Use HTTP to do CRUD operations
 Resources may be exchanged using
different representations

Just a quick GET
GET /fhir/patient/1 HTTP/1.1
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/xml+fhir;charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 787
Content-Location:
http://spark.furore.com/fhir/Patient/1/_history/12
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Patient xmlns="http://hl7.org/fhir"><identifier><label>SSN</label><identifier><system>
http://hl7.org/fhir/sid/usssn</system><id>444222222</id></identifier></identifier><name><use>official
</use><family>Everywoman</family><given>Eve</given></name><telecom><system>phone</system><value>555-
555 2003</value><use>work</use></telecom><gender><system>http://hl7.org/fhir/sid/v2-0001</system>
<code>F</code></gender><birthDate>1973-05-31</birthDate><address><use>home</use><line>2222 Home
Street</line></address><text><status>generated</status><div
xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">Everywoman, Eve. SSN:444222222</div></text></Patient>
UTF-8
encoded
See the BOM?
HTTP Verb + path

A Resource’s REST identity
 In fact: an URL
 http://server.org/fhir/Patient/1
endpoint
resource type
identifier
Note: This URL resolves to the current version of a resource

REST “representations”
GET /fhir/Patient/1?_format=json HTTP/1.1
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json+fhir;charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 787
GET /fhir/Patient/1 HTTP/1.1
Accept: application/json+fhir
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json+fhir;charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 787

Patient
MRN 22234
“Ewout Kramer”
30-11-1972
Amsterdam
Remember metadata?
Metadata
Resource Identities
http://fhir.hl7.org/Patient/23E455A3B
http://fhir.hl7.org/Patient/23E455A3B/_history/4
Last updated
2013-12-23T23:33:01+01:00
http://hl7.org/fhir/Profile/us-core
http://hl7.org/fhir/tag
http://example.org/fhir/Status#Test

Mapping (meta)data to
HTTP
 Resource data
 Resource id
 Resource version
 Last update date
 Tags
 http body
 Url
 Content-Location
header
 Last-Modified header
 Category header

Tag metadata
GET /fhir/Patient/1 HTTP/1.1
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Location: http://server.com/fhir/Patient/1/_history/12
Category: http://example.org/fhir/Status#Test;
scheme="http://hl7.org/fhir/tag"; label="Our test tag"
http://hl7.org/fhir/tag A general tag
A profile tag - a claim that the Resource
conforms to the profile identified in the
term
http://hl7.org/fhir/tag/security A security label

REST in the spec
Let’s look at these operations in the
specification….

Mapping to verbs
create 2.1.10
The create interaction creates a new resource in a server assigned location. The create
interaction is performed by an HTTP POST operation as shown:
POST [service-url]/[resourcetype] (?_format=mimeType)
read 2.1.6
The read interaction accesses the current contents of a resource. The interaction is
performed by an HTTP GET operation as shown:
GET [service-url]/[resourcetype]/{id} (?_format=mimeType)
update 2.1.8
The update interaction creates a new current version for an existing resource or creates a
new resource if no resource already exists for the given id. The update interaction is
performed by an HTTP PUT operation as shown:
PUT [service-url]/[resourcetype]/{id} (?_format=mimeType)
delete 2.1.9
The delete interaction removes an existing resource. The interaction is performed by an
HTTP DELETE operation as shown:
DELETE [service-url]/[resourcetype]/{id}

Exercise #1
Fiddling around with Fiddler
&
Getting data from a FHIR test
server
(45 minutes)

Break!
Coffeebreak
15 minutes

DECONSTRUCTING THE
FHIR DATAMODEL
The basic building blocks of FHIR

Let’s look at datatypes
Resource
Narrative
Extensions
Metadata
Elements
Extensions
Primitives
(integer, boolean,
string, instant)
Derived
Primitives
(oid, uuid,
code, id)
Composite
Datatypes
(HumanName,
Quantity, Period,
Address, Identifier )
Constrained
Types
(Quantity:
Distance, Count,
Duration, Money)
use
use
use

Primitives - peculiarities
boolean xs:boolean Values can be either true or false
integer xs:int A signed 32-bit integer
decimal xs:decimal
A rational number. A true decimal, with
inbuilt precision (e.g. Java BigDecimal)
instant xs:dateTime
An instant in time - known at least to the
second and always includes a
timezone.
uri xs:anyURI A Uniform Resource Identifier Reference.
date
union of xs:date,
xs:gYearMonth,
xs:gYear
A date, or partial date as used in
human communication. No time zone.
dateTime
union of xs:dateTime,
xs:date,
xs:gYearMonth,
xs:gYear
A date, date-time or partial date as used
in human communication. If hours and
minutes are specified, a time zone must
be populated.

Derived primitives
 Using the ISO date/time with timezone
 “1951”, “1951-06” and “1951-06-04”
 “1951-06-04T10:57:34.0321+01”
 “1951-06-04T10:57:34.0321Z”
 Derived types based on uri(!): OID and
UUID
 urn:oid:1.2.3.4.5
 urn:uuid:a5afddf4-e880-459b-876e-e4591b0acc11

Level up:
Composite Datatypes

Datatypes
Let’s take a look at the “Data Types”
section of the FHIR specification at
http://www.hl7.org/implement/standards/fhir/datatypes.htm

Coded types
Codes are defined in code systems

Coded types
 When used in a Resource, the modelers
include Bindings
 Bindings specify which codes can be used

Level up: resources

“Choice” properties

References

Quick look at extensions
Resource
Narrative
Extensions
Metadata
Elements
Extensions

Extending a multiple birth
Key = location of formal definition
Value = value according to definition

Complex extensions

Quick look at narrative
Resource
Narrative
Extensions
Metadata
Elements
Extensions

Narrative

Exercise #2
Editing a Resource Instance -
by hand!
(45 minutes)

Using VS / Eclipse
 Eclipse: You need the Xml editing tools and
add
<Patient xmlns="http://hl7.org/fhir"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://hl7.org/fhir ../patient.xsd">
 VisualStudio: Go to Xml/Schemas… then
add fhir-all.xsd

Break!
Lunch
60 minutes

FHIR Tutorial - Morning

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