Questionnaire Requirements

Background

This section outlines the foundational reasons for adopting FHIR Questionnaires and the HL7 FHIR® Structured Data Capture (SDC) standard in Ontario’s digital health ecosystem. It highlights how this approach supports consistency, data quality, interoperability, and future scalability for eReferral and eForm use cases.

Standardization of Data Collection

FHIR Questionnaires provide a standardized format for collecting patient and clinical information.

In the context of eReferral and eForms:

  • This ensures that all healthcare providers are using consistent forms regardless of the system or organization.
  • It reduces variability in how data is captured, improving data quality and interoperability.

Digital Transformation of Paper-Based Workflows

Traditional referral forms and clinical intake forms are often paper-based or implemented inconsistently across systems. FHIR Questionnaires serve as the digital equivalent:

  • They replicate the structure and logic of paper forms.
  • They support dynamic behavior (e.g., conditional questions, validation rules) that paper forms cannot.

Improved Interoperability

Using FHIR Questionnaires allows eReferral and eForms to:

  • Seamlessly exchange structured data between systems (e.g., EMRs, hospital systems, provincial repositories).
  • Align with national and international standards, facilitating cross-organizational referrals and data sharing.

Enhanced User Experience and Workflow Integration

FHIR SDC provides a framework for how forms are:

  • Designed (by form authors),
  • Rendered (by user interfaces),
  • Completed (by clinicians or patients),
  • Processed (by receiving systems).

This ensures that:

  • Forms are intuitive and responsive to user input.
  • Systems can automatically validate and process submissions, reducing manual work and errors.

Support for Complex Clinical Scenarios

eReferral and eForms often require:

  • Conditional logic (e.g., show additional questions based on previous answers),
  • Pre-population of known patient data,
  • Validation constraints (e.g., required fields, value ranges).

FHIR Questionnaires and SDC support all of these features, enabling smart forms that adapt to clinical context.

Future-Proofing and Scalability

By building on FHIR and SDC:

  • eReferral and eForms are aligned with the future direction of digital health.
  • New forms and workflows can be added or updated without custom development.
  • The system can scale to support new use cases, such as patient self-assessments, remote monitoring, or AI-assisted triage.