Skip to main content

An Interactive Visualization Tool for HL7 FHIR Specification Browsing and Profiling

Abstract

The rich semantic representation and sophisticated structure definition of the HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) specification require relatively great efforts to understand and utilize. The objective of our study is to design, develop, and evaluate an open-source and user-friendly visualization interface for exploring the FHIR specification. We prototyped an interactive visualization tool for navigating and manipulating the FHIR core resources, profiles, and extensions. The utility of the tool was evaluated using evaluation metrics mainly focusing on its interactive mechanism and content expressiveness. We demonstrated that the visualization techniques are helpful for navigating the HL7 FHIR specification and aiding its profiling.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9

Notes

  1. https://www.hl7.org/fhir/DSTU1/

  2. https://www.microsoft.com/net

  3. https://simplifier.net/

  4. https://www.hl7.org/fhir/http.html

  5. https://www.hl7.org/fhir/structuredefinition.html

  6. https://www.hl7.org/fhir/element-definitions.html

  7. https://hl7.org/fhir/xml.html

  8. https://hl7.org/fhir/json.html

  9. https://hl7.org/fhir/rdf.html

  10. https://www.hl7.org/fhir/condition.html

  11. http://hl7.org/fhir/us/core/StructureDefinition-us-core-careplan.html

  12. http://hl7.org/fhir/us/core/StructureDefinition-us-core-race.html

References

  1. Health level seven (HL7). http://www.hl7.org/. Accessed Dec. 2017

  2. The Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics (OHDSI). https://ohdsi.org/. Accessed Dec 2017

  3. Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). https://www.pcori.org/. Accessed Aug. 2018

  4. Richesson RL, Krischer J (2007) Data standards in clinical research: gaps, overlaps, challenges and future directions. J Am Med Inform Assoc: JAMIA 14(6):687–696. https://doi.org/10.1197/jamia.M2470

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Decker C (2010) The past, present, and future of clinical data standards. In: SAS Global Forum 2010 Conference. Seattle, WA, USA, p. 14

  6. The HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) https://www.hl7.org/fhir/index.html. Accessed Dec. 2017

  7. Bender D, Sartipi K (2013) HL7 FHIR: an agile and RESTful approach to healthcare information exchange. In: Computer-Based Medical Systems (CBMS), 2013 IEEE 26th International Symposium on 2013, pp. 326–331. IEEE

  8. (2017) FHIR: guide to resources https://www.hl7.org/fhir/resourceguide.html. Accessed Aug. 2017

  9. IntermountainHealthcare: CIMI Browser. http://www.clinicalelement.com/cimi-browser/- /. Accessed Dec. 2017

  10. (2013) CEM browser user guide - clinical element models. http://www.clinicalelement.com/partials/user-guide.html. Accessed Dec 2017

  11. openEHR: openEHR Clinical Knowledge Manager. http://www.openehr.org/ckm/. Accessed Dec. 2017

  12. (2017) OpenEHR clinical information models, Clinical Knowledge Manager. https://openehr.atlassian.net/wiki/display/healthmod/Clinical+Knowledge+Manager. Accessed Dec 2017

  13. caDSR CDE browser. https://cdebrowser.nci.nih.gov/cdebrowserClient/cdeBrowser.html. Accessed Dec. 2017

  14. National Cancer Institute (NCI). https://www.cancer.gov/. Accessed Dec. 2017

  15. clinFHIR. http://clinfhir.com/. Accessed Jan. 2018

  16. Hay D Clinfhir wiki. https://clinfhir.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/CLIN/overview. Accessed Jan. 2018

  17. Gottlieb D FHIR resource browser. http://gotdan.github.io/fhirbrowser/index.html. Accessed Dec. 2017

  18. firely: Forge. http://fire.ly/forge/. Accessed Dec. 2017

  19. Solbrig HR, Hong N, Jiang G (2018) Automated population of an i2b2 clinical data warehouse using FHIR. AMIA Annu Symp

  20. Hong, N., Wang, K., Yao, L., Jiang, G. (2017) Visual FHIR: an interactive browser to navigate HL7 FHIR specification. In: Healthcare Informatics (ICHI), IEEE International Conference on 2017, pp. 26–30. IEEE

  21. (2017) D3, Data-Driven Documents https://d3js.org/ .

  22. HAPI FHIR. http://hapifhir.io/. Accessed Mar. 2017

  23. D3.js Collapsible Tree. http://bl.ocks.org/robschmuecker/7880033. Accessed Dec. 2017

  24. Reingold EM, Tilford JS (1981) Tidier drawings of trees. IEEE Trans Softw Eng SE-7(2):223–228

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. jQuery JavaScript Library. http://api.jquery.com/. Accessed Dec. 2017

  26. FHIR Resource: StructureDefinition. https://www.hl7.org/fhir/structuredefinition.html. Accessed Dec. 2017

  27. (2017) Profiling FHIR. https://www.hl7.org/fhir/profiling.html. Accessed Dec 2017

  28. (2017) Profiles defined as part of FHIR. https://www.hl7.org/fhir/profilelist.html. Accessed Dec 2017

  29. HAPI FHIR Profile/StructureDefinition validation. http://hapifhir.io/doc_validation.html. Accessed Dec. 2017

  30. Luzzardi PR, Cava RA, Winckler, MA, Pimenta MS, Nedel LP (2002) Evaluating usability of information visualization techniques.

  31. Anderson EW (2012) Evaluating scientific visualization using cognitive measures. In: the 2012 BELIV Workshop: Beyond Time and Errors-Novel Evaluation Methods for VisualizationBELIV, vol. 10.1145, p. 2442576.2442581

  32. FHIR download. http://hl7.org/fhir/downloads.html. Accessed Dec. 2017

  33. US core implementation guide (release 1.0.1) http://hl7.org/fhir/us/core/profiles.html. Accessed Dec. 2017

  34. Sharma DK, Peterson KJ, Hong N, Jiang G (2018) The D2Refine platform for the standardization of clinical research study data dictionaries: usability study. JMIR Hum Factors 5(3):e10205. https://doi.org/10.2196/10205

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Funding

This study is supported in part by NIH grants U01 HG009450, the Mayo Clinic Center for Clinical and Translational Science grant (UL1TR002377), and the National Library of Medicine grant (5K01LM012102).

Author information

Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Guoqian Jiang.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of Interest

All the authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest related to this article.

Additional information

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Resources available:

https://github.com/hongna2008/FHIR

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Hong, N., Wang, K., Wu, S. et al. An Interactive Visualization Tool for HL7 FHIR Specification Browsing and Profiling. J Healthc Inform Res 3, 329–344 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41666-018-0043-8

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41666-018-0043-8

Keywords

  • HL7 FHIR
  • Visualization
  • Interactive browsing
  • Model profiling
  • Clinical data model