Stream: bulk data
Topic: Expected behavior for Group.member
Matthew Spielman (Oct 01 2021 at 14:49):
Hi All,
We have a non-FHIR based registry of patient cohorts which we will be using as the basis for our Group Resources when querying for our Bulk FHIR implementation. We have a lot of complex role/security/ consent based processing associated with these groups. It's a lot more simple (and safe) to not display any of these patients in Group.member because the cohorts can be very large and processing all those rules at runtime is costly.
While it does appear that having no Group.member is fine with actual=false (i.e. member.empty() or (actual = true)), my question is: Would returning Group resources that are, actual=false, member.empty(), and characteristic.empty() be particularly problematic for bulk FHIR client implementations? If a client actually did an $export on our Groups, they would get all the data the user is authorized to receive per our rule eval.
TIA!
Michele Mottini (Oct 01 2021 at 14:55):
Bulk client do not really need the Group resource itself, you can even not implement it at all (beside the $export operation) - and save you the trouble.
Matthew Spielman (Oct 01 2021 at 14:57):
Yes, I am aware of that. This is a business driver on how we want to expose the data in our system via bulk FHIR. Our customers are particularly focused on research use cases; they want to be able to expose these Cohorts on a per-study basis so that a researcher (such as a pharmaceutical company) can only access the data they are authorized (and paid) for.
Yunwei Wang (Oct 01 2021 at 15:49):
Bulk data client may need to find the target group for export by regular group searching. I think it is up to the server to decide how to help client finding the correct group.
Yunwei Wang (Oct 01 2021 at 15:52):
For example, client may need to know this group is for "patient aged 20-39 years old, with smoking history, and lived in zip code 55555" but not list of patient in that group.
Matthew Spielman (Oct 01 2021 at 15:59):
Thanks, that's helpful. I just wanted to make sure we're not doing something that is permitted by the specification but not implementable by any of the FHIR bulk clients.
Last updated: Apr 12 2022 at 19:14 UTC
