Stream: implementers
Topic: Data Enrichment Best Practice- Use Case
Amit Cudykier (Jun 25 2021 at 17:56):
Hello! We have this use case that we would like to enrich\clean data coming back from our FHIR server using an external service and include the new data in the FHIR response. Did anyone have any thoughts on what will be the best way to communicate what elements in the resource were enriched?
Some thoughts are using a custom tag in the metadata and perhaps a provenance resource or an extension.
Any comments/thoughts/suggestions would be highly appreciated!
Lloyd McKenzie (Jun 25 2021 at 20:57):
Is the scenario one of someone POSTs or PUTs an instance and you enrich before storing or is this enrichment that happens at some subsequent time? (There are different ramifications for things like _lastUpdated, meta.version and eTags.)
Amit Cudykier (Jun 26 2021 at 06:06):
The scenario is mainly for GET. The enrichment will happen subsequent after the resource is returned from the FHIR server and before the client sees it. I saw your comment on my other posts and I can see how it will get complex with the lastUpdated, meta.version and eTags.
Wonder what will be the most accepted why do achieve something like this. Perhaps a provenance resource as you mentioned with an extension to denote what was changed by the external service.
Rik Smithies (Jun 26 2021 at 22:55):
if you need Provenance to point to specific attributes that were enriched, instead of just the whole resource, you can use this proposed standard extension http://hl7.org/fhir/StructureDefinition/targetElement (see https://jira.hl7.org/browse/FHIR-21284).
John Moehrke (Jun 27 2021 at 16:05):
great theory, but that extension does not yet exist and has not been drafted... unless I am missing where it has been defined.
Eric Prud'hommeaux (Jun 27 2021 at 21:12):
https://chat.fhir.org/#narrow/stream/179166-implementers/topic/Source.20of.20information/near/206442700 suggests that there's at least a strawman out there
Rik Smithies (Jun 28 2021 at 23:28):
It's an approved change request, that is just waiting to be put in the build.
Amit Cudykier (Jul 01 2021 at 16:00):
Thank you. we will define an extension based on what we found in those threads. I will share what we came up with
Last updated: Apr 12 2022 at 19:14 UTC
