Leveraging the OpenHIM & Instant OpenHIE to Support COVID-19 Data Exchange

Jembi is proud to have completed work on developing 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. Digital Square funded this work, and it was completed in collaboration with the OpenHIE COVID-19 task force, with support from IntelliSOFT.

The objective of the project was to 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, and to persist this 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. This included a landscape assessment of COVID-19 case reporting and lab information system workflows and data schemas, which we used to inform the set of generic data exchange requirements.

The OpenHIM was used to support the ingestion of the 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.

Figure 1 - COVID-19 Data Exchange Solution

In addition, we packaged this work in Instant OpenHIE, which was extended to include several new packages (Figure 2). A Health Management Information System (HMIS) infrastructure package