UKCore Hackathon Supporting Guide

This guidance is under active development by NHS England and content may be added or updated on a regular basis.

Observation Messages

Pattern

The document and document metadata is sent directly to the recipient.

send-message

Pros

  • Is well supported in HL7 v2 ORU_R01 Unsolicited Observation messages.

Cons

  • Concurrency Issues (document is correct at point of creation, corrections or updates can make interaction complex)
  • Suited for point to point sharing only

FHIR Technical Framework Options

This pattern may be sent in several ways in FHIR. They overlap especially around the content of the FHIR resources. They should have low technical overhead with only minor amendments required.

RESTful API

The document metadata and document are individually to the recipient. This would involve the following interactions.

  • POST /Observation to store the individual observations.
  • POST /DiagnosticReport to store the report

It is likely this would need to be complemented with patient demographic interactions, such as searching for an existing patient record or adding a new record.

Transactions

This contains the same interactions listed in the previous section and is sent in a single interaction using the FHIR Bundle resource.

  • POST / to send a collection of the RESTful interactions. See demonstration examples 'Bundle-transaction-physicalActivity' and 'Bundle-transaction-ClinicalObservations' POST /

Messaging

This has a defined set of resources and for Observation Messages, this is likely to include FHIR DiagnosticReport and Observations. In FHIR this is defined in a FHIR MessageDefinition i.e. unsolicited-observations

It is sent via the following interaction.

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