FHIR Vital signs

OpenEMR Development
#1

Hi,

Here is a question/request for feedback…

The FHIR R4 standard for vital sign observations ( see https://www.hl7.org/fhir/observation.html ) suggests that for a vital you could/should have parameters that indicate if the reading is N (normal), H (high) or L (Low).

So, I have reviewed the data table for vitals, and it appears that it is not set up for this.

The question then is/are:

  1. Have I missed something and I can add N, H, L readings to the patient vital signs?
  2. If this is absent in OpenEMR, is there any plans to include it?

If the answers are negative, we would be interested in supporting the required changes; either through direct contribution, or support of another developer who may be working on this area at the moment.

Thank you in anticipation of meaningful feedback.

Cheers, Simon

#2

Hi @censon We don’t currently collect the data in OpenEMR that would populate the interpretation property on vitals. I haven’t heard of any discussion to add that in.

I’m the developer currently implementing the US-Core FHIR Vitals observations which is a more limited subset then the full FHIR R4 standard you mentioned. We are prioritizing getting all the requirements completed for ONC certification so I don’t see us implementing this in the next few weeks.

When you say supporting the change, are you a developer and feel comfortable adding working in PHP/OpenEMR? I can point you to the relevant files and you can create a pull request if you’d like. If you don’t feel comfortable doing that, you can private message me to describe more what you have in mind of supporting the development work.

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