Hi, continuing further on the discussion on how to support FHIR DianosticReport resources:
In many cases, a diagnostic report resource can contain both discrete data elements as well as files (for example, a set of obs for a lab report, and then the entire lab report in PDF form). Our mechanism allows users to write their own handlers (just like complex obs handlers) to mange how they want to store these data.
Now, PDF documents are sent over as base 64 encoded, and the question is: How to store them as default?
I’m against doing PDF rendering inside the FHIR module: That’s not the FHIR module’s job, and if we do that, there’s no end to what kind of other rendering we’d need to do.
So my argument is that for the default (base handler) we just take any PDF document, and store it as a flat file in base 64 encoded form it comes in. If someone else wants to manage fancy pdf displays of their forms then fine, they can build their own handler to that, and do PDF rendering.
Does this make sense? Would appreciate any feedback, as this may inform how we manage other types of content as well.
