Stream: implementers
Topic: DocumentReference plaintext
Orlando Osorio (Feb 20 2019 at 21:03):
We are implementing clinical notes using a DocumentReference resource, encoding the text as base64 but we need them to be searchable by content. Storing them as base64 means we can't query them efficiently. We are considering extending DocumentReference.content but then attachment is required and we would have to keep them both. Is there another resource more suited to this problem or a better extension?
Grahame Grieve (Feb 20 2019 at 21:06):
there's no requirement that you store the same format as you have on the API. I store the content alongside the raw resource in an internal indexable format
John Moehrke (Feb 20 2019 at 21:12):
Not necessarily a good solution, but often systems will do a index of the content and place searchable words into either .description or .context.event ( Yes, all searchable words, not just clinical act codes.) This does require that you can pre-process the document into a useful and reasonable set of searchable words.
Orlando Osorio (Feb 20 2019 at 21:14):
We are using Aidbox as a fhir server, it would have to be supported there, @nicola (RIO/SS)
nicola (RIO/SS) (Feb 21 2019 at 05:17):
@Grahame Grieve do you inline attachment into document reference if it’s text? What if it’s html or jpeg? How do you specify search by document content? I think, document with plain text is important corner case to think about - i.e. support explicitly by something like DocRef.content.value[x] ?!
nicola (RIO/SS) (Feb 21 2019 at 05:19):
Or like @John Moehrke said - something like DocRef.content.summary as text
Grahame Grieve (Feb 21 2019 at 06:25):
in my server if the content is attached (not by reference) I make a copy of it in another database table for indexing
nicola (RIO/SS) (Feb 21 2019 at 07:18):
what is a search parameter to find docs with a specific text?
John Moehrke (Feb 21 2019 at 14:12):
hmm, could that be a query parameter on DocRef? It would not need to be supported by everyone...
John Moehrke (Feb 21 2019 at 14:14):
as a query parameter it would not be worse than not having the query parameter... so if a server supported it, then it would reduce the number of entries returned... Could start as simply text query parameter, with other query parameters of more power. Or is there an example of a type of query parmeter elsewhere that is more powerful than string word search?
Grahame Grieve (Feb 21 2019 at 21:12):
there's already a query parameter, one of the generic ones
John Moehrke (Feb 21 2019 at 22:45):
ah. so one could use _text?
John Moehrke (Feb 21 2019 at 22:46):
so we could just add some clarification on the DocumentReference page that the _text and _content query parameter could/should not only search over the DocumentReference resource but also the attachment bits...
Grahame Grieve (Feb 22 2019 at 01:22):
yes that would be a good clariifcation
John Moehrke (Feb 22 2019 at 12:43):
Last updated: Apr 12 2022 at 19:14 UTC
