Health Connect Australia Provider Directory FHIR Implementation Guide

Health Connect Australia Provider Directory FHIR Implementation Guide, published by Australian Digital Health Agency. This guide is not an authorized publication; it is the continuous build for version 0.3.0-preview built by the FHIR (HL7® FHIR® Standard) CI Build. This version is based on the current content of https://github.com/AuDigitalHealth/HealthConnect/ and changes regularly. See the Directory of published versions

Bulk Data Extraction

Overview

Bulk data extraction provides an efficient mechanism for Health Connect Provider Directory consumers to retrieve large datasets outside of real-time query patterns. This specification defines how client systems can request complete copies or incremental updates of provider directory data using the FHIR Bulk Data Access specification.

The Health Connect Provider Directory supports bulk data extraction for enterprise integration scenarios.

Background

FHIR Bulk Data extraction consists of several key components:

• Data scope selection - Defining which resources and data subsets to extract
• Asynchronous processing - Managing long-running export operations with status tracking
• NDJSON format - Standardised new-line delimited JSON output format
• Secure file retrieval - Downloading completed extracts with appropriate authorization

Note: Bulk export requests require a FHIR Parameters resource in the request body to specify the export parameters. This allows for complex parameter combinations and ensures proper encoding of multiple _typeFilter values.

Process workflow

The following diagram illustrates the 3 broad steps involved in performing an asynchronous bulk export. Navigating to each of the hyperlinks yields further detail about how each is performed.

Health Connect Provider Directory bulk data specifics

The scope of the data selection

When performing a bulk data extraction, the Parameters resource must include a _type parameter listing the resource types to export, as well as a _typeFilter parameter for every resource type specified. The _typeFilter defines filtering conditions that apply only to resources of its corresponding type, and only resources matching these conditions will be included in the export.

Supported resource types

The Health Connect Provider Directory supports bulk export for all resource types defined in this implementation guide.

Functions provided

This service supports the standard FHIR asynchronous request pattern allowing clients to submit large queries that require significant server-side processing, with results being made available for retrieval at a later time.

This function is provided by the $export operation that implements the FHIR Bulk Data Access specification (https://hl7.org/fhir/uv/bulkdata/) bulk export pattern.

Extract types and scheduling

The Health Connect Provider Directory supports two primary extract variations:

1. Snapshot Extracts - Large snapshots based on the supplied criteria
2. Delta Updates - Incremental changes since a particular time

Both extract types are ad-hoc and can be initiated at any time.

The following four key sub-functions are supported:

• Initiate a batch export - refer to the Batch Export Request Submission page
• Polling requests to retrieve the status of the batch export - refer to the Batch Export Request Status page
• Retrieval requests to retrieve the results of the batch export - refer to the Batch Export Retrieve Results page
• Cancellation requests to cancel a batch export request - refer to the Batch Export Request Delete page

Primary extraction approaches

The Health Connect Provider Directory supports extraction approaches using standard FHIR bulk data parameters:

1. Snapshot and delta extracts

• Primary Filter: Resource type selection using _type and filtering using _typeFilter
• Use Cases: Data synchronization and replication for local systems
• Key Parameters: _type, _typeFilter, _since

2. Geographical centric extraction

• Primary Filter: Location-based filtering using _typeFilter
• Use Cases: Regional health planning, local referral networks, proximity-based service discovery
• Key Parameters: _typeFilter=Location?address-state=[STATE], _typeFilter=Location?near=[LAT]|[LNG]|[DISTANCE]

3. Organization centric extraction

• Primary Filter: Organization identifier or name filtering
• Use Cases: Organizational data synchronization, corporate structure analysis
• Key Parameters: _typeFilter=Organization?identifier=[SYSTEM]|[VALUE], _typeFilter=Organization?name=[NAME]

4. Service-Type centric extraction

• Primary Filter: Healthcare service type filtering
• Use Cases: Service-specific planning, specialist network analysis
• Key Parameters: _typeFilter=HealthcareService?service-type=[SYSTEM]|[CODE]

Note: Multiple _typeFilter parameters can be combined for complex filtering scenarios