Bahmni and FHIR

Software Bahmni
1

Hello everyone, my name is Armin and I am new to Bahmni. Therefor, I’ve got some questions about Bahmni and FHIR. How is this Product connected to FHIR? Is it possible to fully implement a FHIR-Server “behind” Bahmni? And is FHIR already fully supported or are theire any limitations? Is it possible to expand the FHIR resources, that are already used, easily? And is their already a mapping between the data Bahmni uses and the FHIR standard?

Thank you!

2

Hi @armin,

Bahmni currently runs on OpenMRS Core 2.1 (see here), meaning that the new FHIR2 module should work fine with it (see here). Having said that the FHIR2 module is not part of the official Bahmni distribution, but again it is up to anyone to just add it.

Currently Bahmni’s frontend doesn’t transact with the backend using FHIR messaging. Refactoring it to do so would be a big deal, but of course it is possible in theory.

(Note: OpenMRS 3.0 does just that following a “FHIR first” approach, have you looked into it?)

Those are not Bahmni-specific questions and all answers are yes. This is the Jira project for the FHIR2 module: Dashboard - OpenMRS Issues

Assuming you would use the FHIR2 module with Bahmni, this “mapping” is taken care of by the module itself.

3

Hi @mksd,

thanks for your detaild answer. That leads me to two more questions, to understand it better: Does that mean that Bahmni is just a component of OpenMRS? And you said, OpenMRS should work fine with FHIR. What does the system does with FHIR? Sharing messages or documents, or does it also import or export data between a FHIR server and medical device?

I just try to understand the usecase of why FHIR is used within OpenMRS.

Thanks a lot!

4

Bahmni is a distribution of OpenMRS.

Yes, but then it depends what one means by “OpenMRS”. OpenMRS is a toolbox of pieces of software to assemble EMR distributions (such as Bahmni for instance). One of the pieces of software is OpenMRS Core and what I said is that the FHIR2 module will work with Core 2.0 and above. Actually what I said is that Core 2.1 is fine to run the FHIR2 module.

(Both OpenMRS Core and the FHIR2 module are pieces of software from the toolbox.)

Ok that’s a broad question, what does one do with FHIR? Personally I advocate for it to be the primary messaging language when integrating OpenMRS with other systems. When integrating you need to decide how to model messages to be exchanged between systems, and I believe that as much as possibly can this messaging should be done with FHIR. That’s my opinion, not necessarily that of the community.

OpenMRS 3.0 (the newer distribution of OpenMRS currently being developed with microfrontends) also aims at eventually be a frontend app that speaks FHIR with its backend so that “one day” the backend can become any FHIR backend.

1 Like
5

Just wanted to add the following note, since a google search of Bahmni & FHIR brings this thread up.

  1. Bahmni LITE (latest release / on docker), ships with OpenMRS FHIR2 module. Many modules in bahmni use FHIR: Lab Lite, ABDM, SNOMED Terminology server over FHIR Integration, etc.
  2. Bahmni support for open standards / interop including FHIR, HL7, etc are summarized here: https://bahmni.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/BAH/pages/3176333313/Bahmni+support+for+Open+Global+Standards+Interoperability+OpenHIE+-+2023+Roadmap

If you have questions, please post as a comment on the wiki page, or start a new conversation in OpenMRS talk. thanks!