FHIR Tooling Eco-system

This page describes the FHIR tooling eco-system

Note that the FHIR tooling eco-system is a set of disparate tools that are linked by the conformance resources.

Terminology Tooling Ecosystem

A set of services that support operational use of terminologies. Todo: should this cover knowledge resources too (Medication, DataElement)?

A typical story board:

• author a value set through a value set editor
• save it to a terminology service
• integrate it into a UI by referencing it by URL
• publish it to a forma registry

Parts of the Terminology tooling eco-system

• Terminology Service (see [official definition])
  • CRUD on code systems, value sets, concept maps & naming systems
  • expansion / lookup / validation / translation / closure
  • cds-hook catalogue: reference value set, reference display code
  • implementations: Health Intersections, Apelon, Art-Decor, VSAC, ??
• Terminology registry (does this need to be a terminology service too?)
  • curated publication, voting/comment/review (see collaborative review IG below)
  • implementations: Health Intersections, Furore?, trifolia?
• Code System / Value Set / Concept Map Editor
  • find resource(file / registry)
  • display / edit them / preview outcomes (speculative evaluation)
  • import / export from other formats - excel, csv, ?...
  • save resource (file / registry - e.g. publish)
  • implementations: Health Intersections, Apelon, VSAC, Art-Decor, PenRad

Open Issues:

• Do we want to add support for patch updates to better integrate with the whole notion of harmonization proposals? (Even if we don't use that process, we're going to want to allow submission of requests for addition of codes, changing individual definitions, etc. )

Conformance / Design Tooling Ecosystem

A set of tools that support the process of working with resources and profiles on resources, and by extension, implementation guides. This includes content design tooling, code generation, publishing, and testing tooling

• Conformance Service
  • CRUD on StructureDefinition, Conformance, OperationDefinition, SearchParameter, CompartmentDefinition, ImplementationGuide, TestScript
  • Operations: $generate-snapshot, $publish (for ImplementationGuide), $compare (StructureDefinition, OperationDefinition, Conformance)
  • cds-hook catalogue: reference StructureDefinition
  • candidates: Health Intersections, Furore?
  • Conformance Servers are recommended to implement the Server Actor in the FHIR Colloborative Review Implementation Guide
• Testing Service
  • Test servers
  • test clients
  • Candidates: TouchStone, Crucible
• Conformance Registry
  • curated publication
  • voting/comment/review
  • candidates: Furore
• Editors (?Designers)
  • Profiles
    • Forge (Furore)
  • Conformance Statements
    •  ?
• OperationDefinitions
  • •  ?
  • Search Parameter(?)
    •  ?
  • Implementation Guide
    •  ?
• Code generation....?

Open issues

• Will need a good way to manage external files too - Basic resources with ad-hoc narrative for security, use-cases, etc; ability to manage Binaries for images, etc.
• Doesn't the publication tooling fall into this too? "$publish" seems a tad light-weight to represent everything that's involved in that process
• Should we be including reference implementation generation too?
• When dealing with voting/comment/review of content, is that only profiles & IGs, or does it include the core spec too?

Collaborative Review Eco-system

The collaborative review system allows one user to invite a set of other users to make comments on a set of resources. Initially the application of this is to a review conformance resources, to help with distributed development, but it is anticipated to be suitable for use in clinical review processes.