VRDR FHIR IG Proposal

Vital Records Death Reporting

Owning workgroup name

Public Health

Committee Approval Date:

September 6, 2018

Contributing or Reviewing Work Groups

None

FHIR Development Project Insight ID

Project Insight ID: 1475

Scope of coverage

Bidirectional exchange of mortality data between State-run Public Health Agencies (PHA) Vital Records offices and U.S. National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).

IG Purpose

The purpose of the VRDR FHIR IG is to provide guidance regarding the use of FHIR resources as a conduit for data required in the bidirectional exchange of mortality data between State-run Public Health Agencies (PHA) Vital Records offices and U.S. National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).

Content location

https://github.com/HL7/vrdr

Proposed IG realm and code

us/vrdr

Maintenance Plan

Funding for the project is provided through the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). The funding extends through the two-year anticipated STU period for this specification. Beyond that, the committee will be seeking volunteers or additional funding from NCHS or related entities.

Short Description

The VRDR FHIR IG provides guidance regarding the use of FHIR resources for the bidirectional exchange of mortality data between State-run PHA Vital Records offices and NCHS.

Long Description

The scope of this project is to produce and ballot a Standard for Trial Use (STU) Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) implementation guide (IG) for use in reporting of death events to the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) by State and Local Public Health Agencies (PHA). Bidirectional exchange of mortality data between PHA Vital Records offices and NCHS is essential to effective public health surveillance and emergency response efforts. Automation of the reporting process adds efficiencies that dramatically improves the efficacy of event response, data analysis, and evidence-based measurable prevention of the causes of death.

The VRDR FHIR IG will provide guidance for the use of standard FHIR resources as a conduit for data required by vital records death reporting. The use of FHIR as a platform for the automation of vital records death reporting is expected to improve existing automation by enabling wide-scale adoption and leveraging the potential of electronic health records and clinical decision support systems.

The VRDR FHIR IG will lay a foundation for the expansion of automated standards-driven information exchange to include tributary flows of information from entities such as physicians, medical examiners, coroners, funeral directors, and family members to public health agencies and between public health agencies and secondary users of detailed mortality data and aggregate statistics.

Involved parties

The sponsoring workgroup for this project is the HL7 Public Health workgroup. Funding for non-volunteer project resources is provided by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). The project facilitators are Hetty Khan, a Health informatics Scientist at CDC/NCHS and Paula Braun, Data Science Entrepreneur at CDC. The project modeling and publication facilitator is AbdulMAlik Shakir, President, Hi3 Solutions, Inc.

Expected implementations

State Vital Record departments in CA, FL, NH, NY, GA, and MI and the NCHS.

Content sources

Content sources include a working prototype of a vital records death reporting system developed by the MITRE Corporation in collaboration with the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI). The resource profiles develop under that effort have been revised to align with the VR Domain Analysis Model to ensure consistency between it and other HL7 specifications in the vital records domain.

Example Scenarios

A sample scenario support by this FHIR IG includes a person dying in California. Following finding and recommendations from the medical examiner, funeral director, and local hospital are provided to the California State Public Health Agency, the PHA forwards a death report to the NCHS using the FHIR resources specified in this IG.

IG Relationships

There are no other IGs that depend upon the VRDR FHIR IG. However, the VRDR FHIR IG relies heavily upon resource profiles defined as part of the U.S. Core IG.

Timelines

• 07/01/18 - 10/05/18 Review and assess existing internal and external work products related to VR death reporting.
• 09/10/18 – 10/26/18 Document the workflow and information requirements of VR Mortality and Morbidity reporting.
• 09/17/18 - 11/02/18 Prepare profiles of applicable STU 3 FHIR Resources; leveraging existing profile definitions where possible.
• 10/08/18 – 11/16/18 Prepare the ballot ready version of the VRDR FHIR IG and obtain approval to proceed to the Jan 2019 ballot cycle.
• 11/05/18 – 11/30/18 Prepare the VRDR FHIR IG for inclusion in the January 2019 FHIR ballot.
• 12/03/18 – 01/04/19 Ballot the VRDR FHIR IG as an STU specification.
• 01/07/19 – 02/15/19 Conduct post-ballot comment reconciliation.
• 02/11/19 – 03/15/19 Apply ballot driven modifications to the VRDR FHIR IG.
• 03/18/19 – 04/19/19 Prepare the publication-ready version 1.0 of the VRDR FHIR IG.
• 04/15/19 – 04/26/19 Submit v1.0 of the VRDR FHIR IG for publication.

When IG Proposal Is Complete

When you have completed your proposal, please send an email to FMGcontact@HL7.org