Clinical Informatics
FHIRCat: Enabling the Semantics of FHIR and Terminologies for Clinical and Translational Research
Description
HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) is an emerging next generation standard framework for the exchange of electronic health record (EHR) data. The FHIR specification defines a common vocabulary and mechanism for sharing and querying EHR data. All the major EHR vendors are developing standardized FHIR interfaces to their clinical data. The FHIR specification describes how FHIR data can be stored and shared using the Resource Description Framework (RDF), a standard model for data interchange on the web that has been formalized in a series of W3C Recommendations.
The FHIRCat project aims to design, develop and evaluate a novel informatics platform known as FHIRCat that will leverage Semantic Web technologies, FHIR models/profiles, and ontologies for effective standards-based data integration and distributed analytics, enabling high-quality reproducible clinical and translational research. Its goal is to build the tooling needed to enable researchers to convert FHIR data into RDF formats, validate the data using standard RDF validation tools such as ShEx, use triplestore databases to integrate FHIR data with biomedical knowledge from sources such as ontologies or databases, and to develop examples that showcase the value of these tools in better interpreting, aggregating and analyzing FHIR data.
RENCI's Role
Jim Balhoff and Gaurav Vaidya contribute expertise in semantic web technologies and biomedical ontologies to the FHIR RDF working group, particularly in the areas of software development, data modeling and data management.