FHIR Profiling Tool

Owned by Aryn Wiebe
Last updated: Sept 23, 2024
4 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

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”.

image-20240523-184909.png
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 http://hl7.org/fhir/directory.html and download the FHIR specification for the version you need.

Screen Shot 2024-02-15 at 5.02.17 PM.png

  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.

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

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

Note that if the custom profile’s specification exists as a standalone resource, it will need to be nested within a larger 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.

  2. Go to your reference and copy the Canonical url and JSON specification

  3. Update the fullUrl value and load 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

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

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: