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FHIR Service FAQ

This article answers common questions about FHIR on the LifeOmic Platform. For more documentation, see FHIR Service.

Why FHIR as a data-shape?​

The LifeOmic Platform leverages many data shapes that represent Electronic Health Records for individuals.

  • Clinical time-series data points - examples are diagnoses, blood pressure, heart-rate measurements, blood glucose, medications, scheduled visits, etc...
  • Genomic Variants, Gene expression, Proteomics, Pharmacogenetics - file formats such as VCF, BAM, CSV, TSV
  • Documents, Images, and Audio - file formats such as JPEG, PNG, DICOM, PDF, etc.

Why FHIR?​

For information on why LifeOmic supports the FHIR standard, see Why FHIR.

What sources does the analyze engine use for suggestions?​

When the analyze engine provides suggestions for an OCR document or other item, it pulls data from the following sources:

  • A subset of snomed codes to suggest bodySites (anatomy/organs). The analyze engine parses several thousand snomed codes. Contact LifeOmic to add additional codes.
  • A complete list of LOINC codes. The analyze engine evaluates over a hundred thousand LOINC codes to determine the appropriate coding suggestions.
  • ICD-10-CM data from Amazon Comprehend Medical.
  • Search terms and ontologies defined in the LifeOmic Platform project.
  • Existing resources (observations, procedures, conditions, medications) within the LifeOmic Platform project.

Does LifeOmic FHIR Service support Audit Trails?​

Yes, LifeOmic FHIR Service supports Audit Trails for tracking changes made to FHIR resources. The Audit Trail is composed of FHIR Audit Event resources. Every time a FHIR resource is manipulated, LifeOmic FHIR Service produces an Audit Event. The Audit Event tracks who, what, when, where, and why the FHIR resource was changed.

For more information, see Audit Trail.

What's a FHIR Audit Event?​

A FHIR Audit Event is a standard FHIR resource used for tracking changes. Audit Events are immutable within LifeOmic FHIR Service, meaning they are read-only and cannot be edited or deleted.

How do I enabled Audit Trails?​

Audit Trails are configurable at the project level. This allows project owners to enable Audit Trails only when necessary. Typically, Audit Trails are enabled for clinical projects where it is important to track changes made to clinical data for security and compliance purposes. Audit Trails are usually not enabled for research projects, since it is typically not important to know when data is manipulated.

What happens if I disable Audit Trails?​

Once Audit Trails are disabled for a project, Audit Events will no longer be produced within the project. The existing Audit Trail is unaffected. Users will always be able to view Audit Events that were produced when the Audit Trail was enabled.

What happens to the Audit Trail if I delete a project?​

If you delete a project, you also delete the project's audit trail. The FHIR Audit Event resources are deleted along with the rest of the project data.

How can I access FHIR Audit Events?​

FHIR Audit Event resources are available from the LifeOmic FHIR Service APIs along with all other FHIR resources in the project.

Every FHIR Audit Event references the FHIR resource or resources which were manipulated. These referenced FHIR resources are versioned and stored in a cost efficient manner that provides high durability. As a side effect, read-times when accessing versioned FHIR resources is slower than accessing the current version of a FHIR resource.

See the LifeOmic FHIR Service Versioning for more information on accessing versioned FHIR resources through the FHIR API.