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Healthpoint HL7® FHIR® standardised API

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  • www.healthpoint.co.nz over 8,700 services with over 11,900 associated locations and 8,600 associated practitioners. Over 1,000 service changes each month.�
  • A lot of organisations with a need for a directory, but not the time/resource to maintain it.�
  • Sharing trusted directories with NZ digital health solutions
    • Single, central, reliable source of truth
    • Reduce system wide duplication
    • Ensure consistency of information
    • Maximise value of information published
    • Extend reach of Healthpoint directories.

The need for a health service directory API

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Why FHIR®?

  • Standard for health data exchange.
  • Emphasis on web standards, implementation and interoperability.
  • Fast and easy to implement
  • Developers like it ☺
    • Easy to use, great documentation website: https://www.hl7.org/fhir/
    • Open source tools e.g. HAPI FHIR and a large community of developers and organisations that support it.
    • Lots of places to get help, ask questions, ponder ideas e.g. Stack Overflow, FHIR Zulip chat and FHIR community forums.
  • Flexible to adapt to your use case through the use of extensions and profiling.
  • NZ support and community through HL7® NZ

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  • Learnings from a legacy Healthpoint API – existing XML API and customers
  • September 2018 – February 2019: API build and data mapping
  • March – September 2019: API portal website build

Healthpoint �Website

Healthpoint �API

Authenticated API users

Getting started

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  • All built on AWS (Amazon web services), hosted in AWS Sydney
  • AWS allows us to easily scale and provide a secure, responsive, robust and reliable. Up time is pretty much 100%
  • API gateway for build, management and monitoring, Cognito for authentication and user management, CloudFront for content delivery.
  • Lots of other AWS microservices; including Amplify, CloudWatch, DynamoDB, Lambda, Elastic Bean Stack
  • HAPI FHIR: https://hapifhir.io/ – an open-source implementation of the FHIR® specification in Java
  • Healthpoint API is a RESTful API
  • Currently GET method to Read and Search resources (return bundles of results)

The Tech Stuff

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  • https://www.hl7.org/fhir/
  • Modules
    • Foundation
    • Conformance
    • Terminology
    • Exchange
    • Administration
  • Healthpoint Data
    • Healthcare Service
    • Location
    • PractitionerRole
    • Practitioner

Healthpoint use of the HL7® FHIR ® Standard

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Healthcare Service resource

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Healthpoint use of Healthcare Service resource

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  • Place where anyone, clinical, analyst or developer can understand what content they can get from the API.
  • Open API (aka Swagger), Documentation, Samples, Common use cases

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What worked and our lessons and learnings

  • Agile and use case-based development works well.
  • Get something up and add on with time and with customer feedback to ensure building value added features. Continuous improvement.
  • AWS made scaling up easy, but the out of the box still needed a fair bit of customisation.
  • If you can, simplify your data model before you build your API.
  • Extensions - it’s annoying to change them, so try get it right first time, engage with HL7® NZ and local FHIR community, use NZ extensions.
  • If “FHIRising” your data model to fit the FHIR data model – beware of changes in context or losing important data.
  • Not everyone is ready or resourced to consume an API – “Can I please have this in an excel sheet?” but this is constantly moving forward.

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Who is using the Healthpoint API?

  • 140 + registered users
    • PMSs
    • DHBs
    • PHOs
    • Māori health organisations
    • Private Hospitals
    • Health insurers
    • Health services / �organisations
    • Ambulance
    • Software companies �creating �health apps or websites

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www.healthpointapi.com