FHIR API overview
FHIR – Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (hl7.org/fhir) is a next generation standards framework created by the HL7 organization. It is designed to support the interoperability and exchange of healthcare related information including clinical, administrative, public health, and research data between organizations. The specification leverages widely used RESTful APIs that use HTTP requests to GET, PUT, POST, and DELETE data.
FHIR is based on “Resources” which are common building blocks for all data exchanges. Resources are represented as either XML or JSON.
The Pega FHIR APIs in Pega Foundation for Healthcare offer pre-configured REST/JSON connectors to integrate your application with external electronic medical / health record (EMR/EHR) systems. You can also integrate your application with other clinical data repositories and fetch information about patients or consumers that you manage in your application.
This version of the Pega FHIR APIs supports the current - v4.0.1: R4 Mixed Normative and STU - version of the FHIR Standard in the REST/JSON format for the following Resources:
| Resource | Description |
| Allergy Intolerance | Risk of harmful or undesirable, physiological response which is unique to an individual and associated with exposure to a substance. |
| Binary | A resource that represents the data of a single raw artifact as digital content accessible in its native format. A Binary resource can contain any content, whether text, image, PDF file, ZIP file, and so on. |
| Care Plan | Describes the intention of how one or more practitioners intend to deliver care for a particular patient, group, or community for a period of time, possibly limited to care for a specific condition or set of conditions. |
| Condition (Problem) | Use to record detailed information about conditions, problems or diagnoses recognized by a clinician. There are many uses including: recording a diagnosis during an encounter; populating a problem list or a summary statement, such as a discharge summary. |
| Coverage | This resource is intended to provide the high-level identifiers and descriptors of an insurance plan, typically the information which would appear on an insurance card, which may be used to pay, in part or in whole, for the provision of health care products and services. |
| Device | This resource identifies an instance of a manufactured item that is used in the provision of healthcare without being substantially changed through that activity. The device may be a medical or non-medical device. Medical devices include durable (reusable) medical equipment, implantable devices, as well as disposable equipment used for diagnostic, treatment, and research for healthcare and public health. Non-medical devices may include items such as a machine, cellphone, computer, application, etc. |
| Diagnostic Report | The findings and interpretation of diagnostic tests performed on patients, groups of patients, devices, and locations, and/or specimens derived from these. The report includes clinical context such as requesting and provider information, and some mix of atomic results, images, textual and coded interpretations, and formatted representation of diagnostic reports. |
| Document Reference | Document identifier as assigned by the source of the document. This identifier is specific to this version of the document. This unique identifier may be used elsewhere to identify this version of the document. |
| Encounter | An interaction between a patient and healthcare provider(s) for the purpose of providing healthcare service(s) or assessing the health status of a patient. |
| Explanation of Benefits | This resource provides the claim details; adjudication details from the processing of a Claim; and optionally account balance information, for informing the subscriber of the benefits provided. |
| Episode of Care | An association between a patient and an organization / healthcare provider(s) during which time encounters may occur. The managing organization assumes a level of responsibility for the patient during this time. |
| Family Member History | Significant health events and conditions for a person related to the patient relevant in the context of care for the patient. |
| Goal | Describes the intended objective(s) for a patient, group, or organization care, for example, weight loss, restoring an activity of daily living, obtaining herd immunity via immunization, meeting a process improvement objective, among others. |
| Imaging Study | Representation of the content produced in a DICOM imaging study. A study comprises a set of series, each of which includes a set of Service- Object Pair Instances (SOP Instances - images or other data) acquired or produced in a common context. A series is of only one modality (for example, X-ray, CT, MR, ultrasound), but a study may have multiple series of different modalities. |
| Immunization | Describes the event of a patient being administered a vaccination or a record of a vaccination as reported by a patient, a clinician or another party and may include vaccine reaction information and what vaccination protocol was followed. |
| Medication | This resource is primarily used for the identification and definition of a medication. It covers the ingredients and the packaging for a medication. |
| Medication Dispense | Indicates that a medication product is to be or has been dispensed for a named person/patient. This includes a description of the medication product (supply) provided and the instructions for administering the medication. The medication dispense is the result of a pharmacy system responding to a medication order. |
| Medication Statement | A record of a medication that is being consumed by a patient. A Medication Statement may indicate that the patient may be taking the medication now or has taken the medication in the past or will be taking the medication in the future. The source of this information can be the patient, significant other (such as a family member or spouse), or a clinician. A common scenario where this information is captured is during the history taking process during a patient visit or stay. The medication information may come from e.g. the patient's memory, from a prescription bottle, or from a list of medications the patient, clinician or other party maintains. |
| Observation | Measurements and simple assertions made about a patient, device, or other subject. |
| Patient | Demographics and other administrative information about an individual or animal receiving care or other health-related services. |
| Practitioner | A person who is directly or indirectly involved in the provisioning of healthcare. |
| Practitioner Role | Practitioner Role covers the recording of the location and types of services that Practitioners are able to provide for an organization |
| Procedure | An action that is or was performed on a patient. This can be a physical intervention like an operation, or less invasive like counseling or hypnotherapy. |
| Schedule | A container for slot(s) of time that may be available for booking appointments. |
| Slot | A slot of time on a schedule that may be available for booking appointments. |
For additional information on the Resources and the Standard object model, refer to http://hl7.org/fhir/resourcelist.html.
To make use of these APIs, you will need to connect to a source clinical data system that has a FHIR server. Pega used two publicly available sandbox environments for testing the APIs:
- HAPI FHIR - http://hapi.fhir.org/ – This is a public test server available for testing FHIR APIs
- Epic FHIR - https://fhir.epic.com/ – This is an open source light weight access layer made available for Epic.
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