Building an Electronic Medical Record System Exchanged in FHIR Format and Its Visual Presentation.

Abstract

Currently, the Taiwan Electronic Medical Record Exchange Center uses the Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) framework, which is based on the international medical standard. The CDA R2 standard, defined in 2005, is used for cross-institution retrieval of electronic medical records (Ministry of Health and Welfare, Information Department, 2021). However, CDA R2 only supports the exchange of clinical documents and is limited to the XML format. Due to the lack of a standardized framework for medical data exchange in Taiwan, different standards and specifications result in different data interface methods between systems, requiring customization for each system by healthcare institutions or the government. The inconsistency in data formats requires healthcare institutions and the government to spend more time on data parsing and mapping, resulting in slow integration of medical data. In this study, we simulated healthcare institutions using Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) for medical information exchange and utilized the exchanged medical information to create a dynamic dashboard to assist healthcare professionals in making medical decisions. To ensure information security, we employed Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) for secure transmission, which encrypts the transmitted medical record data using the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol, preventing deliberate interception and tampering of medical record data between the two systems. Finally, to test the load and performance of static and dynamic resources and web applications, we conducted a system performance evaluation using Apache JMeter. The results of this study demonstrate that replacing the gateway of the Electronic Medical Record Exchange Center with an FHIR server effectively reduces the time and cost spent by developers on data format conversion while also mitigating the information security risks associated with the previous VPN solution. Additionally, by utilizing dynamic charts, healthcare professionals are assisted in making medical decisions.