Bulk FHIR Support
The InterSystems HL7® FHIR® server now supports exporting Bulk FHIR, a capability which is rapidly gaining favor in the market. There are many use cases for Bulk FHIR export; for interested readers, Dan Gottlieb provides an explanation in this YouTube videoOpens in a new tab on the HL7 FHIR DevDays Youtube channel. The standards for Bulk FHIR export can be found on the HL7 website (https://hl7.org/fhir/uv/bulkdata/Opens in a new tab).
Administrators can use Bulk FHIR export to backup and migrate servers. Data analysts can use Bulk FHIR to extract population sets for research and health management. With Bulk FHIR export, payers can transmit massive data sets to providers, and vice versa.
InterSystems IRIS for Health 2023.1 provides both a Bulk FHIR export server and client. The server makes use of a new component, the Bulk FHIR Coordinator (BFC). The BFC performs several functions, including:
-
Receiving and processing FHIR Bulk data $export kick-off requests
-
Executing FHIR queries against a target FHIR endpoint and storing results
-
Processing query results into Bulk FHIR-appropriate NDJSON payload files
-
Responding to requests to download completed export files
-
Supporting the following $export operations
-
Patient /$export
-
Group/[id]/$export
-
/$export
-
Supporting the SMART Backend Services Authorization Model
The following diagram shows how the BFC can interact with different FHIR servers.
We hope to improve the ease of using this feature in coming releases, and we would appreciate your feedback. Please send all feedback to bulkfhir@intersystems.com.