Hay on FHIR

clinFHIR does AI

I thought I’d see how useful the current AI models are in producing a FHIR bundle of resources that represents some – likely clinical – scenario to help those learning FHIR. I wanted to have a conversational interaction so that the bundles created can be viewed and refined, and a way for the AI to explain the choices it made when processing the input prompt and generating the bundle. The resulting bundle would be validated using the FHIR Validator.

TLDR: They are surprisingly good!

Bundle Viewer gets a timeline

Thanks to an excellent suggestion from my friend Peter Jordan, the clinFHIR Bundle Viewer can now display the resources within a Bundle – such as an IPS document – on a timeline. 

Updates to clinFHIR

I’ve just published an update to clinFHIR – well, not so much an update as a re-packaging of the underlying codebase into docker containers, and rationalizing the number of servers I’m using. 

As part of the update I’ve replaced the front page (with a little help from AI) and only included the apps that I believe people are actually using (and actually still work!). Let me know if there’s any I’ve missed)

The previous version of clinFHIR is still available here, and Graph builder is here. I’ll leave them up for a month or so in case of any issues, but then they will be removed – likely around the end of August 2026.

If you do have any issues/questions/concerns then raise them on the zulip chat.

Definition based resource extraction

In this post we’re going to take a closer look at SDC definition based resource extraction from a completed Questionnaire.

SDC (Structured Data Capture) is an Implementation Guide that describes and expands the use of the FHIR Questionnaire resource in defining forms to display and capture structured information. As well as visual and behavioural enhancements it defines mechanisms for pre-population of data as well as extracting it to FHIR resources that we’ll discuss here. (We’ll take a look at pre-population in another post).

Bundle Viewer update

The Bundle Visualizer module in clinFHIR has been around for a while. It allows you to view the contents of a FHIR bundle in a number of ways, and can also validate the contents. As part of a general update to clinFHIR that I’m working on, I’ve taken the opportunity to ‘refurbish’ and rename it to Bundle Viewer. This post describes the main changes.

HTTPS upgrade

So I’ve finally migrated clinFHIR to using https rather than plain old http. It’s something I’ve meant to do for a while, but it wasn’t without issues!

I decided to use nginx as a reverse proxy to manage the interface, and also took the opportunity to rationalize the servers – they’ve proliferated over the years! (and cost more than they really need to 🙂 ). chatGPT was a real help!

clinFHIR itself should work pretty much as it did before – though I did note that my browser did seem a little confused initially – I needed to clear the browser cache, so if you are having issues then that is probably a good idea. 

One consequence of the migration is that clinFHIR cannot access non-https servers as it is a single page application – the http request comes from the browser which won’t allow a secure site to access a non-secure site. I don’t believe that will be an issue these days, but do reach out if it is a problem for you. I could proxy the call through the clinFHIR server if needed.

Graphbuilder (gb2.clinfhir.com) was a little more challenging. I got nginx set up ok, but after doing so, I realized that all my graphs had gone! They are saved in the local browser cache (unless they’ve been copied to the library) and the secure site was unable to access them from the non-secure site. This is by design, so there’s nothing I can do to change that.

After some thought, I’ve set up a different site at gb.clinfhir.com which has the same app, just served over https. For new users this is the site to use, but if you have existing graphs then you’ll need to continue to use gb2.clinfhir.com for the moment.

I’ll work on the migration strategy – at this time I’m thinking a file download / upload will be the easiest, but will post again when it’s all running. I’ll probably take the opportunity to tidy up the graph builder library – something else I’ve been meaning to do for a while.

In summary:

• clinfhir.com should work as before – just over https
• gb2.clinfhir.com should also work as before – still using http with existing graphs present
• gb.clinfhir.com  is a copy of gb2 but served over https and no existing graphs

I will post again when the migration strategy is complete – hopefully within the next couple of weeks.

Do reach out on the fhir chat if you have any issues or concerns.