FHIR Connectathon 7 for Java Dummies

July 31, 2014 5 Comments

Last week we had a look at using the .net client to access a FHIR server as a lead up to the next connectathon. I thought it might be fun to do the same thing using the HAPI Java client (Now that it’s at release .5 – half way there!).

Now a disclaimer: I am not a Java developer – in fact I’m learning Java doing this work. In some ways I’d rather be in the .net world, but I’m a Mac user, and .net plays uneasily on that platform, so Java it is. (Yes, I know there’s Mono – it just doesn’t work for me for some reason).

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FHIR Clinical scenarios: Nutrition Assessment

July 30, 2014 1 Comment

We’ve had a couple of posts recently (well 3) talking about how we can use FHIR resources to represent some common clinical scenarios as a prelude to the clinical connectathon in September. Each of the scenarios exercised a different part of FHIR (and had a slightly different clinical focus):

  • The Chronic Care Scenario has a heavy emphasis on the Care Plan
  • The Acute Care scenario provoked a discussion on how we should be using the Encounter resource – and further highlighted a need to refer form an Observation to an Encounter
  • And finally the scenario dealing with Allergies led us to think about my favourite resource – the List.

(Here’s a bit more detail…)

There’s been a bit of discussion in the HL7 lists recently about the concept of a Clinical Assessment – and how best to represent it in FHIR. As it turns out, one of the scenarios put forward by Patient Care that we won’t be exercising (yet) is the process around making a Nutrition Assessment, and Elaine (one of the Patient Care co-chairs) has asked if I could do a post on this scenario to help stimulate discussion – so here it is.

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Clinical Scenarios in FHIR

July 26, 2014 1 Comment

Well we’ve reviewed all 3 of the posts on the scenarios for the Clinical Connectathon in Chicago in September by the Patient Care Working Group – and there was some good discussion on all of them.

I didn’t keep as good notes as I should have for the Chronic Care scenario – which was a large scenario. A core part of this was the maintenance of the care plan – I had suggested that there should be multiple plans – 1 per Condition, but the consensus of the group was that a singe plan would be sufficient.
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Clinical Scenarios in FHIR: Adverse reaction

July 17, 2014 2 Comments

The final scenario that is a candidate for the clinical connectathon is one that deals with allergies and Intolerance. Here are the details, but at a high level:

  • A patient is prescribed penicillin and 8 days into the course develops symptoms that are diagnosed as an allergy to penicillin, which is recorded in their allergy list, along with details of the nature of the allergy.
  • In addition, the patient (through a patient portal) updates their allergy list – adding an entry that is subsequently updated (or reconciled) by the clinician.

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Clinical Scenarios in FHIR – II

July 16, 2014 5 Comments

In a previous post we talked about the clinical connectathon coming up at the next Working Group Meeting, and described how we could use FHIR resources to represent one of the scenarios – the chronic care scenario. Looking back, much of that scenario was around the creation and maintenance of a Care Plan (which might be worth a re-visit at some point). In this post, we’re going to shift gears a bit and look and another scenario created by the Patient Care Working Group – the Acute Care Scenario.
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Joint FHIR / openEHR clinical review

July 12, 2014 Leave a comment

For the clinical folk:

http://omowizard.wordpress.com/2014/07/11/inaugural-joint-archetype-review-by-hl7-openehr/

I love it when Standards Development Organizations work together!

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Clinical Scenarios in FHIR

July 3, 2014 7 Comments

As you know (or should by now!), FHIR has from the outset been an implementer driven standard. The focus has always been on making healthcare interoperability as straightforward as possible, and regular connecathons have been an important part of that process (and we’re up to our 7th now).

However, it has to be admitted that thus far it has been the ‘techies’ – the ‘geeks’ – that are the main attenders at connectathon – and that’s kind of inevitable, given all the base work that’s needed to make FHIR a realistic standard for exchanging health information.

But FHIR is all about exchanging clinical information, and that means that it has to meet the needs of clinicians (which I use in the widest sense) as well as the technical folk. (And patients too – though that is another story).

At the last Working Group Meeting in Phoenix, we decided that it was time to think about a ‘Clinical Connectathon’ – where the emphasis was on meeting the needs of clinicians delivering care rather than the needs of technical people supporting them – can FHIR  do that?

So, at this WGM in September (held in Chicago) we’re going to have our first Clinical Connectathon (as well as the usual one – sigh). The focus of this event is to allow clinicians to focus on the “clinician to clinician connection” rather then the underlying technical resources that support those interactions.
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