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FHIR Profiling Tool

FHIR Profiling Tool

Owned by Aryn Wiebe
Last updated: Nov 28, 2024
5 min read

The FHIR Profiling tool is a development utility that can be used to generate FHIR Resource JSON Templates according to any FHIR version specification. The FHIR Profiling tool performs two key activities:

  1. First creates a FHIR Profiling SQLite database (fhir_profiles.db) by parsing and storing JSON specification files uploaded to the project. By default, the tool generates resources according to FHIR v4.0.1, however this is configurable.

  2. Using this database, the FHIR Profiling tool generates the desired FHIR Resource JSON schema, which you can then use in other projects to create and map FHIR resources.

How to use it:

Using +COMPONENT, import the FHIR Profiling Tool

By default, the FHIR Profiling Tool is pre-loaded with the FHIR v4.0.1 resources. The component contains specifications for FHIR v4.0.0 and v4.0.1, so you can change the default configuration to use v4.0.0 by changing the custom field FhirVersion in the component card to “4.0.0”.

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Default custom fields

Need another FHIR Version?

This can be adapted by manually uploading the new FHIR specification to the component:

  1. Go to the official FHIR Specification and download the FHIR specification for the version you need.

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  1. In the downloaded specification files, locate “profiles-resources.json” and “types-resources.json”. Create a new folder with your version name (ex. v3_0_0) under the Specifications folder and upload these files into your version’s folder with the names “resources.json” and “types.json” respectively.

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  1. Update the FhirVersion custom field value to your new version (ex. 3.0.0)

This component processes and stores specification data in a SQLite database (Specifications/fhir_profiles.db) for easy access. If you wish to update the FHIR version and/or load any custom profiles into that database, set the custom field Refresh in the component card to “true” before starting the component. This flag tells the component to reference the specified FHIR version and any files in the Specifications/Custom folder and refresh the database on startup.

Now that the component card has been configured to the correct FhirVersion and Refresh details, you can start the component!

If the component was set with Refresh as true, it will take some time to initialize and load the database. It will reset the Refresh flag to false when done.

Once ready, the component will provide a URL in the component status:

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Clicking on the provided URL will take you to the FHIR Profiling Tool’s menu which contains a list of all the FHIR resources and types available in the SQLite database.

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Clicking on any of the links will trigger the tool to generate a template JSON for the specified FHIR resource or type:

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You can now copy the template JSON and bring it over to your FHIR component to use in your interface. See the FHIR Resource Creator for an example of how to use a FHIR JSON template to generate and map FHIR resources.

Adapting the component:

If any custom profiles or extensions are needed, you can add the FHIR Profile Snapshot <custom_profiles>.json files to the Specifications/Custom folder. If no extensions are needed, the folder should be left empty.

The custom profile must be:

  1. A Profile Snapshot (the complete definition of the resource profile). The FHIR Profiling Tool uses the snapshot to generate the FHIR resource. A resource cannot be generated from a differential profile.

  2. If the custom profile’s specification exists as a standalone resource, it will need to be nested within a bundle resource definition.

Let’s walk through this process using an example custom profile - De-Identified UDS Plus Patient.

  1. Start with a bundle resource definition (sample: ). Notice that the fullUrl and resource tables are empty.

    Untitled 4.png
    Empty bundle

  2. Go to your reference, copy the Canonical url and download the profile snapshot as JSON.

  3. Update the fullUrl value with the canonical URL and copy the custom profile into the resource table. Note that you may need to remove an extra set of curly brackets as the resource table’s brackets are equivalent to the ones in the JSON specification from the screenshot in the previous step.

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  4. Upload the finished JSON (sample: ) into the Specifications/Custom folder.

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Custom FHIR profiles may use FHIRPath to define rules and relationships within the data. FHIRPath represents datatypes with fully-qualified URLs such as, http://hl7.org/fhirpath/System.String, however, these need to be mapped to the simple primitive datatype for the profiler to use.

Additional datatypes used in custom profiles can be added to the mapping function replaceHttpIDwithID in the FHIRGENcreateResource.lua file:

 

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