Business Context

This page presents the executive summary and business requirements for implementing Ontario Health’s digital form strategy using HL7 FHIR® Structured Data Capture (SDC). It defines the goals, scope, functional and non-functional requirements, and key considerations that guide the development and rollout of standardized FHIR-based questionnaires across Ontario’s digital health ecosystem.

The Ontario Health eForms platform was created under the Patients Before Paperwork (Pb4P) initiative to reduce administrative burden on clinicians, streamline processes, eliminate redundancy, enhance efficiency and provide faster service to individuals. eForms will leverage FHIR SDC, which provides a standard framework for consistently defining, rendering, and processing digital forms in a way that can be implemented in user-friendly interfaces. Forms builders will be able to define how forms look, how they behave and how other systems use the forms in the same way.

To support Ontario Health’s eForms Initiative, the adoption of the FHIR Structured Data Capture (SDC) Implementation Guide is essential for ensuring standardized, interoperable, and scalable digital forms. The SDC IG provides a robust framework for defining, searching, rendering, and processing clinical forms using FHIR resources, enabling seamless integration with EMRs and other health information systems. By leveraging SDC, the eForms platform can support dynamic form behavior, pre-population of individual and provider data, and structured data capture that aligns with provincial and national interoperability standards. This ensures that digital forms are reusable but also future-proofed for evolving healthcare data exchange needs—ultimately reducing administrative burden and improving the efficiency and reliability of form submissions across the healthcare system.

Executive Summary

This document outlines the business requirements for implementing the Ontario Questionnaire Requirements using the HL7 FHIR Structured Data Capture (SDC) framework. The goal is to standardize the creation, rendering, and processing of electronic questionnaires across Ontario’s digital health systems, ensuring interoperability, consistency, and alignment with legacy tools.

Business Objectives

  • To standardize and streamline the design, capture, rendering and exchange of structured clinical data using the HL7 FHIR Structured Data Capture (SDC) Questionnaire profile.
  • Enable structured, interoperable data capture using FHIR-based questionnaires.
  • Align new questionnaire capabilities with legacy Ontario form tools.
  • Support e-referral and other digital health workflows through standardized artifacts.
  • Improve individual experience across platforms, including mobile.

Proposal

Adopt the SDC Questionnaire FHIR profile as the foundation for developing and managing electronic forms (eReferrals) across Ontario Health initiatives.

This profile supports advanced features such as:

  • Conditional logic and dynamic behavior
  • Standardized data types and value sets
  • Integration with clinical systems via FHIR APIs
  • Reusability and modular design of form components

Partners

  • Ontario Health Digital Services
  • Clinical and administrative individuals
  • IT and development teams
  • Standards and interoperability teams

Functional Requirements

Ontario Health has developed a set of FHIR artifacts to enable the consistent design, rendering, and behavior of electronic forms across provincial digital health systems. These artifacts support the creation of dynamic, interoperable forms aligned with HL7's Structured Data Capture (SDC) framework and tailored to meet Ontario-specific business and clinical requirements.

The artifacts include profiles, extensions, terminology bindings, and examples that support key features such as:

  • Structured and validated data capture using the SDC Questionnaire profile
  • Support for clinical workflows like eReferral through launch contexts
  • Ontario-specific rendering and behavior extensions
  • Terminology standardization using value sets and code systems
  • Reusable examples that illustrate real-world form behavior

For a complete list of profiles, extensions, code systems, value sets, and example instances, please refer to the official FHIR Artifacts page of this guide:

FHIR Artifacts – CA-ON eForms Implementation Guide (Simplifier)