Adding FHIR data connections to scenarios

Health Bot data connections can be used integrate with systems that support FHIR. FHIR is an HL7 standard for transferring electronic medical records (EMR). FHIR prescribes a format for accessing EMR resources and actions on the resources which follow RESTful principals.

Different FHIR endpoints support different resources and have specific payload structure for interacting with the resource. When you define a FHIR data connection we fetch the supported resources from the endpoint and provide intelligent suggestions for building the correct FHIR payload structure.

In this article we will connect to a dummy FHIR endpoint to demonstrate the functionality. Create a new data connection and select FHIR as the connection type. Learn how to create a new HTTPS data connection

With FHIR connections you only need to provide the base URL and the resource endpoints are implicit. Here is a list of FHIR servers publicly available for testing purposes.

In this examlpe, no authentication or static parameters are required, for the FHIR server we used the PyroHealth test endpoint: https://stu3.test.pyrohealth.net/fhir

Once you provide the base URL, the resource endpoints are defined automatically. To see the resources supported by your endpoint click on “Fetch Resources” at the bottom of the connection.

To make a call to your FHIR endpoint, add the data connection object to a scenario in the visual editor. In the step level details you will see the resources and actions availablt to the FHIR end point are automatically populated. Select the resource and action you would like to make and provide the payload according to the FHIR schema.

The payload will intelligently suggest the objects according to the schema supported by the specific FHIR resource. Your scenario is now integrated with a FHIR server and can access resources in your EMR system.