An interopiO Data Adapter (data adapter) represents a bridge between an external healthcare data source and an interopiO Gateway for a version of the HL7 FHIR® API. A data adapter addresses the following concerns:

• secure connectivity, authorization, and transport of healthcare data
• data transformation (generally to HL7 FHIR)
• data normalization (consistency between HL7 FHIR implementations)
• monitoring, logging, and error handling

Examples of data adapters include:

• A data adapter connects a hospital's EHR HL7 FHIR DSTU2 API to an interopiO FHIR DSTU2 Gateway.
• A data adapter connects a clinic's EHR web service to an interopiO FHIR R4 Gateway.
• A data adapter connects a medical device manufacturer's patient monitoring data to an interopiO FHIR R4 Gateway.

Data adapters facilitate the ability to read from and write to an external data source without having to directly manage the implementation details of a specific healthcare provider.

Each external data source, usually an electronic health record (EHR), can follow the HL7 FHIR standard or its own custom implementation to represent data. interopiO's data adapter library provides a mapping between an EHR's specific data representation and the HL7 FHIR standard, resulting in a normalized presentation of the external data source.

Configuring a Data Adapter

Every data adapter is configured by supplying the type of the external data source, the HL7 FHIR standard that is mapped to the external data source, and any configuration details needed to access that data.

Once a data adapter is created, it can be added to a gateway of the equivalent HL7 FHIR standard, thereby defining what data are available to access through that gateway. A link to more information about gateways is provided below.

 

Data Adapter Types

Data adapter types are defined by the type of external data source to which you are connecting. interopiO has an actively maintained and growing library of data adapters that can serve as a bridge to many existing healthcare data sources. These data sources include Epic, Cerner, AllScripts, Logica, and other custom implementations for specific healthcare providers.

Epic Data Adapter

interopiO's Epic Data Adapter provides a mapping between Epic's proprietary APIs and the HL7 FHIR DSTU2 or R4 standard.

Features unique to the Epic DSTU2 data adapter:

• Mapping one of Epic's private APIs to a Bundle of resources.

• Creating a clinical note using another Epic private API can be accomplished by creating a FHIR DocumentReference resource.

Features unique to the Epic R4 data adapter:

• Convert HL7 FHIR DocumentReference request into an HL7v2 MDM_T02 message in order to file PDF documents in Epic's document management system. These documents later appear on the patients' After Visit Summary (AVS) report and are also available in the patient's MyChart (Patient portal) record. 
• Regular textual notes are routed through HL7 FHIR API based on contentType

AllScripts Data Adapter

interopiO's Allscripts data adapter provides a mapping between Allscripts FHIR and Unity APIs and FHIR DSTU2.

Cerner Data Adapter

interopiO currently has two data adapters for Cerner based on the HL7 FHIR DSTU2 and R4 standards.

Logica Data Adapter

interopiO currently has a data adapter for Logica (formerly HSPC Sandbox) for DSTU2, STU3, and R4 standards.

Custom Data Adapter

Using a Java SDK, custom data adapters can be created. See this article for more details.

Dynamic Data Adapter

A Dynamic Data Adapter is an interopiO Data Adapter that is not bound to a data source. It is a type of custom data adapter.

Instead of querying a data source, a Dynamic Data Adapter will return a fixed response based on the Dynamic data adapter configuration. Some cases for Dynamic data adapters include:

• returning an expected response for a data source that is not implemented yet
• returning a specific response for testing a specific scenario
• overriding a response for a data source and returning a fixed response (for example, if one of your gateway data sources is returning values that cause your application to break in production, you could override this response and return a fixed response such as an empty response)

HL7 FHIR® DSTU2 to R4 Data Adapter

The HL7 FHIR DSTU2 to R4 Data Adapter allows surfacing an HL7 FHIR R4 gateway that is backed by an HL7 FHIR DSTU2 endpoint. interopiO takes care of all data transformation. This is currently available for a subset of HL7 FHIR resources which we are continuously expanding upon.

Data Adapter Implementation

Custom and dynamic data adapters are implemented via an independent SDK and deployed separate from the interopiO Gateway. 

The other data adapter types are bundled with the gateway and deployed together. At some point in the future as part of our product roadmap, we plan on open sourcing our SDK to allow other developers to build custom data adapters.