Can I use the Azure FHIR server as a FHIR terminology server?

Question

Hello! We implemented a basic Azure Health service with the newer FHIR server. It works properly but we don't seem to be able to use the $lookup and $translate operations on the Concept Maps and Code Systems objects that are shown here: https://hl7.org/fhir/terminology-service.html

How can we fill the gap? Is there an add-on, maybe open source, that we can integrate with the Azure PaaS?

Thanks a lot!

Answer 1

gio_tar Thanks for posting your question in Microsoft Q&A. Currently, Terminology operations are not supported in FHIR Does the FHIR service support any terminology operations? and hence cannot be used as a terminology service. Check out the supported operations: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/healthcare-apis/fhir/fhir-features-supported in the doc.

You can choose an external terminology service such as Ontoserver and integrate with AHDS FHIR service via Azure Api Management and here is the sample doc https://github.com/Azure-Samples/azure-health-data-services-samples/tree/main/samples/fhir-terminology-service-integration that talks about the architecture. If you have any feedback regarding this feature, please feel free to share it directly with our product team via Azure API for FHIR or https://github.com/microsoft/fhir-server/discussions. I hope this helps and let me know if any questions.

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