Stream: implementers
Topic: Location 'near' search results - show distance
Kate Dech (Aug 02 2021 at 21:14):
Curious if anyone has implemented a search on Location using near (for geo-based searches)? And if so, did anyone account for 'distance' in the search results?
In our legacy provider search tools that used geo-based searching, the results would include the matching providers distance from the starting search point. With the current structure definition, we can return a provider's lat and long and let the client perform a calculation. But if we want to return a distance, I am curious how this would done. Would this be an extension of the provider of the search-set Bundle (perhaps saying 'match' and '2 miles away').
Any implementer experience would be useful, thanks!
Lloyd McKenzie (Aug 03 2021 at 02:20):
@Brian Postlethwaite
Elliot Silver (Aug 03 2021 at 14:11):
@Luke Duncan I think you were looking at this at one point.
John Moehrke (Aug 03 2021 at 15:45):
I think that CareQuality has something like this. @David Pyke @Joe Lamy @Eric Heflin
Kate Dech (Aug 20 2021 at 16:53):
I did find information in the base spec about this. https://www.hl7.org/fhir/location.html#positional
Thanks.
Brian Postlethwaite (Aug 21 2021 at 08:40):
This is implemented in our server.
And the details are in the spec in this section
http://hl7.org/fhir/2018Sep/location.html#positional
Note the extension in the bundle search component with the distance you're talking about.
Brian Postlethwaite (Aug 21 2021 at 08:40):
Of course the distance we return is a crow flies distance, and routing could have that longer...
Kate Dech (Sep 15 2021 at 16:17):
When performing a near search, is it assumed that server will sort the results smallest distance to largest? If not, what would the mechanism be for requesting a _sort=near? Just curious if it's different because the distance is part of the bundle and not the actual location resources. Thanks.
Kate Dech (Sep 15 2021 at 16:23):
To add more context: the use case is to limit the result of a provider search to the 10 nearest matches near me (where lat and long of 'me' is passed in). There might 100 matching results in the search radius. If a consumer wants to limit to just 10...they may wish to supply _count=10 but the want the closest 10.
Does the near search parameter require that the server sort by distance or would that be client controlled by requesting _sort?
Lloyd McKenzie (Sep 15 2021 at 18:55):
@Brian Postlethwaite
Brian Postlethwaite (Sep 15 2021 at 21:19):
There is nothing currently documented for that. But it makes sense - you could suggest a tracker for that.
John Moehrke (Sep 15 2021 at 22:45):
@Eric Heflin and @Joe Lamy is there something the CareQuality can offer?
Kate Dech (Sep 21 2021 at 00:51):
Logged as https://jira.hl7.org/browse/FHIR-33976 requesting additional guidance. Thanks!
Last updated: Apr 12 2022 at 19:14 UTC
