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What is Azure Health Data Services?

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Azure Health Data Services is a cloud-based solution that helps you collect, store, and analyze health data from different sources and formats. It supports various healthcare standards, such as FHIR® and DICOM®, and converts data from legacy or proprietary device formats to FHIR.

Azure Health Data Services enables you to:

  • Connect health data from different systems, devices, and types in one place.
  • Discover new insights from health data using machine learning, analytics, and AI tools.
  • Build on a trusted cloud that protects your health data and meets privacy and compliance requirements.

Designed to meet your current health data needs and built to adapt to future developments, Azure Health Data Services is a powerful and flexible solution that is always evolving. Microsoft engineers are continuously improving and updating the platform to support new and emerging health data standards so you don't have to worry about changing your data formats or systems in the future.

Differences between Azure Health Data Services and Azure API for FHIR

Azure Health Data Services and Azure API for FHIR are two different offerings from Microsoft that enable healthcare organizations to manage and exchange health data in a secure, scalable way.

  • Azure API for FHIR is a single service that provides a managed platform for exchanging health data using the FHIR standard. Azure Health Data Services is a set of managed API services based on open standards and frameworks that enable workflows to improve healthcare and offer scalable and secure healthcare solutions.
  • Azure API for FHIR only supports FHIR standard, which mainly covers structured data. Azure Health Data Services supports other healthcare industry data standards besides FHIR, such as DICOM, which allows it to work with different types of data, such as imaging and device data.
  • Azure API for FHIR requires you to create a separate resource for each FHIR service instance, which limits the interoperability and integration of health data. Azure Health Data Services allows you to deploy a FHIR service and a DICOM service in the same workspace, which enables you to connect and analyze health data from different sources and formats.
  • Azure API for FHIR doesn't have some platform features that are available in Azure Health Data Services, such as private link, customer managed keys, and logging. These features enhance the security and compliance of your health data.

In addition, Azure Health Data Services has a business model and infrastructure platform that accommodates the expansion and introduction of different and future healthcare data standards.

Next steps

Workspace overview

Create a workspace

Note

FHIR® is a registered trademark of HL7 and is used with the permission of HL7.

DICOM® is the registered trademark of the National Electrical Manufacturers Association for its Standards publications relating to digital communications of medical information.