DHIS2 FHIR Adapter in the Wild

Part of the Interoperability DAC2021 Session: Wednesday 23nd June 14:00

Despite the significant, and impressive, effort made in developing the DHIS2 FHIR Adapter, there has been limited support on its implementation. In addition, using and developing the adapter is based on a knowledge of the FHIR standard and advanced technical skills, which takes time to develop. Consequently, what is possible through this component remains obscure or challenging to most.

The team at itinordic started paying attention to this component early on in its development and can be considered an early adopter of the technology. Itinordic has developed a number of Android apps which interoperate with both DHIS2 and FHIR and consequently has driven development of the adapter since its early days. To the itinordic team, this is one of the most exciting aspects of DHIS2 and opens up avenues to great innovation potential while solving key problems around interoperability. In addition, using FHIR complements many of the DHIS2 features by providing additional standardised interfaces for Health Information Systems (HIS) which cater for both Clinical Decision Support (CDS) and Clinical Quality Measurement (CQM).

On the ground, we find increasing use cases for the appropriation of the adapter. In this presentation, we provide one use case where the adapter is being successfully used. We also provide an architectural overview of the implementation, the problems solved and therefore open up avenues to the next steps for scaling this component in both the DHIS2 ecosystem and our use case.

2 Likes

Questions during the session (from the zoom chat):

From @Richard Mitchell:
Very interesting, thank you! Did you say you had set up 3 FHIR resources so far? How many more do you anticipate mapping?


From @FransAmatali:
how did you manage to make 2 different for example DHIS2 Malaria and immunization interoperable?