Core Consulting

When is a search query in FHIR not a GET request? When it’s a POST request and you use the _search endpoint. I worked with FHIR for a year before I knew it was possible to run search queries as POST requests. At first I couldn’t see a use case for this, but when I considered the sensitivity of the data that can appear in search queries a use case quickly emerged. Developers have a habit of logging everything. An API call comes in, we log where it came from. A long and detailed query string? We log it, just for reference. The problem with this in a healthcare setting is that some of the data coming in as part of FHIR queries could be and often is PHI or PII data, which should never be written to causal log files. – Patient names and dates of birth – Identifiers such as social security or medical record numbers – Conditions and medications Sending the query as a POST request reduces the likelihood of values like these ending up somewhere they shouldn’t. Here’s what it looks like in Postman: https://lnkd.in/e8Ff83Fj - The _search endpoint identifies the POST request as a search query. - The query parameters are sent as form encoded data. - The results are returned in a recognizable bundle. There is no difference in the behavior of the query once it is received by the FHIR server. The returned bundle is the same as it is for a GET request. ~ ~ ~ I write a short email every Tuesday about FHIR and my experiences working with FHIR. You can sign up here: https://lnkd.in/eauB9Mph

Honored to be invited to share our work on the MyHealth Platform at the 14th National Health Research Conference, under the topic Technology in Health. My topic "Leveraging Standardized Local Clinical Knowledge for Enhanced Care Delivery" Which discussed our approach to interoperability and making patient records more accessible across the MOHW. Thank you to Dr Michele Roofe and our partners Carol Hullin Atomica Informatics Heather Leslie Global eHealth Collaborative Heather Grain Dr Evelyn Hovenga ANIMO CONSULTANCY LTD Monica Jones freshEHR Ian McNicoll Candice de Lisser Core Consulting Ricardo Puttini Gabriela Alves Jussara Rötzsch #PAHO #IDB Blair Witzel Daniel Doane #EU #HSSP Ministry of Health & Wellness #openEHR #SNOMEDCT