FHIR RDF Update

David Booth

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HL7 Work Group Meetings

Sept 2021

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These slides: https://tinyurl.com/fhirrdf2021-09

FHIR RDF administration

• Collaboration between HL7 and the W3C:
• RDF subgroup of HL7 ITS group; and
• W3C Healthcare and Life Sciences group

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• Teleconferences are announced on the HL7 ITS mailing list, and on the W3C Healthcare and Life Sciences mailing list:
• https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-semweb-lifesci/

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• Weekly agenda page:�https://confluence.hl7.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=66922543

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Why FHIR RDF?

• FHIR RDF (serialized as Turtle) provides a third standard format for FHIR (in addition to FHIR XML and FHIR JSON)
• FHIR RDF retains the same round-trippability as FHIR JSON or FHIR XML
• FHIR RDF facilitates automated inference and integration of diverse data models
• Main interest in FHIR RDF is from outside the FHIR community
• Not as an interchange format, but for clinical and biomedical research, to connect FHIR data with non-FHIR data, e.g.:
• Mayo Clinic
• Johns-Hopkins
• University of North Carolina
• UK National Institute of Health

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The SOLID Project

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https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/10/technology/tim-berners-lee-privacy-internet.html

https://www.gmdigitalplatform.nhs.uk/projects/personal-online-data-stores-pods/

SOLID is built on RDF

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• NHS is using SOLID to provide patient centric data pods. Pod content is FHIR RDF
• Integrated into Manchester GP Practices, being made available to 3 Million Patients.

https://bidstats.uk/tenders/2019/W43/713556009

https://solidproject.org/

Exploring JSON-LD as an Executable Definition of FHIR RDF to Enable Semantics of FHIR Data

Harold R. Solbrig, Eric Prud'hommeaux, David Booth, Cory M. Endle, Daniel J. Stone, Guoqian Jiang

PhenoPackets and FHIR RDF

PhenoPackets

• JSON Format
• Defined in Protobuf

http://phenopackets.org/

https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/

Cancer Prediction using FHIR and RDF

https://github.com/fhircat/cancer-prediction-on-fhir-rdf

Current efforts

Two prongs:

• Develop an easier way to convert to/from FHIR RDF, based on new features of JSON-LD 1.1
• Validate this approach against existing FHIR/RDF R4
• This also uncovered issues in existing R4 implementation
• Design R5 to improve ease-of-use and make tooling easier to implement
• R4 model was closer to XML

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What is JSON-LD?

Why JSON-LD 1.1 for FHIR RDF?

• Automatically keep current with evolving FHIR specification
• @context definitions auto-generated by FHIR spec build process
• Standard JSON-LD 1.1 libraries can convert FHIR JSON <--> FHIR RDF�(Except for some pre-processing needed)
• Simplify the conversion to/from FHIR RDF
• Though custom conversion may still be desirable for efficiency and error reporting, e.g., in HAPI
• Facilitate experimentation with RDF representations
• Easy to change an @context file to generate different RDF triples

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Q: Why didn't we use JSON-LD originally for FHIR RDF?

A: JSON-LD 1.0 did not have sufficient features. 1.1 does.�

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(Idealized)

FHIR JSON-LD Playground (link)

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Current status

• Weekly FHIR RDF teleconferences
• R01 grant supporting some of the underlying work
• Working through usage issues experienced with R4, to improve R5
• Working on JSON-LD 1.1 tooling for FHIR
• E.g., integration with the FHIR spec build process�

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Minutes to Approve

• https://wiki.hl7.org/ITS_RDF_Concall_Minutes_20210126
• https://wiki.hl7.org/ITS_RDF_Concall_Minutes_20210525
• https://www.w3.org/2021/07/15-hcls-minutes.html
• https://www.w3.org/2021/07/22-hcls-minutes.html
• https://www.w3.org/2021/08/05-hcls-minutes.html
• https://www.w3.org/2021/08/12-hcls-minutes.html
• https://www.w3.org/2021/08/12-hcls-minutes.html
• https://www.w3.org/2021/08/19-hcls-minutes.html
• https://www.w3.org/2021/08/26-hcls-minutes.html
• https://www.w3.org/2021/09/02-hcls-minutes.html
• https://www.w3.org/2021/09/09-hcls-minutes.html
• https://www.w3.org/2021/09/16-hcls-minutes.html

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