Inaugural Developers on FHIR Challenge tackles adverse-event data

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The inaugural HL7 New Zealand Developers on FHIR Challenge was held on Saturday 17 March at the School of Population Health on the Tamaki Campus of the University of Auckland. This collaboration with the University, sponsored by Microsoft, attracted 25 attendees from a variety of backgrounds – technical, business, clinical, academic staff and students – who formed teams to create a solution, using HL7® FHIR® based-APIs, for adverse event data collection, analysis and reporting.

At the beginning of the day, Dr David Hay, one of the founding developers of FHIR, gave a masterclass on how to use FHIR. Then each team was provided with an HL7 board member to act as a mentor as well as being given ready access to New Zealand’s HL7 FHIR experts, to answer questions and solve technical issues.

Development work concluded mid-afternoon and each team then gave a 10-minute presentation of their solution and a demo of their prototype to a panel of judges: Peter Marks, Manager Architecture & Standards at the Ministry of Health, along with David Hay (chair emeritus) and Peter Jordan (chair) from HL7 New Zealand.

Overall the judges were impressed with the quality of each of the presentations, including the thinking behind the solutions, and the demonstrated grasp of HL7® FHIR® in creating user-focused applications. An additional goal of the event was to engage a wider community of diverse stakeholders than just developers in the use of FHIR, and it was gratifying to see teams of mixed backgrounds working together in the creation of challenge solutions and giving positive feedback about the experience.

The judges awarded first prize to team Ad Rec who presented a solution to build a better approach to collection of medication adverse-event data from patients, validated by the patient’s GP and then forwarded to Medsafe. Second prize was awarded to FHIRoholics, third prize to Medfriend and an honourable mention went to FHIRExtinguisher. We will be providing a summary of the solutions as well as the presentation PowerPoint decks to a Challenge showcase on the HL7NZ website.

All four teams have been encouraged to continue to work on their solutions and have been given the opportunity to participate in the HL7® FHIR® and SNOMED CT® Implementation Showcase on Monday 18 June, 9am to 5pm, at the Novotel, Auckland Airport. It’s an opportunity to present their work and discuss their experiences in implementing the key interoperability standards underpinning the NZ Digital Healthcare Strategy.

For further information posted through the event as well as photographs, see #HL7NZHack18 at Twitter.

Source: HL7 New Zealand chairman Peter Jordan, 23 March 2018

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