International Programme

OpenHIM COVID-19 Data Exchange

Project Time Frame:

01 October 2020 - 30 June 2021

Summary

Jembi is proud to have completed work on the development of a prototype solution supporting COVID-19 data exchange using the OpenHIM and Instant OpenHIE to support COVID-19 case reporting and lab result submission using the HL7 FHIR standard. This work was funded by Digital Square, and completed in collaboration with the OpenHIE COVID-19 task force, with support from IntelliSOFT.

Project Goals

01

Conduct a landscape assessment of COVID-19 case reporting and lab information system workflows and data schemas that were used to inform the set of generic data exchange requirements

02

Develop a generic COVID-19 data exchange solution that could be adapted to country needs, supporting ingestion of COVID-19 case reporting and lab data

03

Support saving COVID-19 case report and lab data to a central HAPI FHIR server aligned with the COVID-19 FHIR Implementation Guide, as well as to DHIS2, making use of the DHIS2 COVID-19 surveillance metadata package that was developed by the DHIS2 core team

The OpenHIM was used to support ingestion of COVID-19 case report and lab data through a set of custom mediators supporting HL7 FHIR’s Structured Data Capture approach (Figure 1). The mediators provide capabilities to:

Validate incoming COVID-19 case report and lab result data sources and field values
Map and transform source data to corresponding output fields based on HL7 FHIR’s Structured Data Capture approach
Populate a HAPI FHIR server and DHIS2 with COVID-19 case reports and lab data

In addition, this work was packaged in Instant OpenHIE, which was extended to include several new packages. A Health Management Information System (HMIS) infrastructure package was added, which adds out-the-box support for DHIS2 in Instant OpenHIE. A COVID-19 surveillance use case package was also added, which packages the mediators, configurations, tests and deployment scripts needed to configure the COVID-19 data exchange solution that makes use of the OpenHIM, HAPI FHIR and DHIS2 technologies.