FHIR is a work-in-progress.
Nowhere is this more obvious than when it comes to capturing and managing patient consent.
FHIR’s Consent resource exists and it’s well documented, but the implementation side is not clearly defined or formalized.
Which is why I was impressed to find an article by Mohammad Jafari from March of this year titled “Implementing Consent Management in FHIR”.
You can read the full article here: https://jafarim.net/consent-management-fhir/
He goes into detail on the implementation side of consent, covering such topics as:
- Documenting consent using the Questionnaire and QuestionnaireResponse resources
- Capturing a patient’s signature
- Revoking consent
- Using the Provenance and AuditEvent resources to record consent activity
- Custom operations to identify and encapsulate consent logic
- Use of FHIR Subscriptions to notify entities involved
Discussions around consent pop up in one form or another on most FHIR projects I’ve been involved in, but unfortunately they rarely reach this level of detail.
If you’re building consent management into your FHIR project, this article is a great reference that I recommend all parties involved spend time reading.
If nothing else, it clearly illustrates the complexity involved. This is not a trivial piece of work!
I also recommend keeping an eye on the FHIR Consent Management Implementation Guide Project, which is working to document the profiles and custom operations required.
Read the article: https://jafarim.net/consent-management-fhir/
FHIR’s Consent resource: http://hl7.org/fhir/R4/consent.html
The IG project: https://confluence.hl7.org/display/FAST/Consent+Management
---