A short walkthrough of some of the things that are available to a .NET client developer. Presented at a HL7 New Zealand Conference in June 2016. Since then, interim STU3 .NET clients have been built and published on NuGet supporting the Baltimore 2016 and San Antonio 2017 connectathons.

1. HL7® FHIR ®
.NET DEVELOPMENT
Brian Postlethwaite
June 2016
® ©

2. Brian Postlethwaite
Senior Solutions Architect
FHIR core team member
FHIR Management Group member
Co-chair HL7 International Patient Administration Workgroup
Author of ServD Standard endorsed by the Object Management Group
Providing FHIR guidance to HealthConnex and Telstra Health
Contributor of the .net FHIR client
Implementator of reference server sqlonfhir
Harley Rider

3. Based on Modern WEB technologies
Core Resource Model
Defined Wire Format (XML/json)
CRUD
Searching
Extensible
Profilable/Conformance
Natively Supports Distributed data
Supports REST, Messaging, Services,
Documents
Shortest ever summary of FHIR

4. Standards development (HL7)
Software Vendors
Healthcare Providers
Profiling Organizations (IHE)
Open Source Projects/Products
Reference Implementations
Open Test Servers (24x7)
Connectathons
The FHIR Community

5. .NET 4.0 / .NET 4.5 / PCL
Xamarin
Fiddler / Postman
Visual Studio 2015
NuGet / Package Management
Notepad++ / fhir extension
Web Browser
Reference Server(s)
Online Test Tools (for servers)
projectcrucible, touchstone
Fiddler
https://nehta-au.github.io/
Platforms and Tools

6. Versioning
Marketing Version Spec
Version
File Version NuGet Package
Version
DSTU1 0.0.82
(.2943)
0.11.5
DSTU2 1.0.2
(.7202)
0.90.5 0.90.5-alpha3
May 2016
Connectathon
1.4.0
(.8139)
0.90.5 0.90.5-alpha4
Continuous build 1.4.0
(.8522)
n/a n/a
STU3 Ballot Likely 1.5.0
STU3 Likely 1.6.0 n/a n/a

7. Versions
Pre-release vs stable
Code on Github
Newtonsoft.Json
(highly recommend >= 8.0.3)
NuGET Packages
https://www.nuget.org/packages/Hl7.Fhir.DSTU2/0.90.5-alpha3

8. Projects
Branches
Contributors
Issues register
Documentation
Getting involved
GitHub
https://github.com/ewoutkramer/fhir-net-api

9. Models
Serializers / Parsers
REST Client
Basic Validation
Lots of debug visualizers and code comments
ModelInfo – Search Parameters
Core Structures – Support for Extensions
Why use the .NET client?

10. New Projects?
Legacy Projects?
Exporting Content?
Importing Content?
Where do I start?

11. Start Simple
Get to know fhir
Use a fiddler/browser on existing servers
Create some content
Export some content from your own
system
Consume some content into your own
system
Identify resources of interest to you
Where do I start?
https://github.com/ewoutkramer/fhir-net-api
http://hl7.org/fhir/DSTU2/overview-dev.html

12. DataTypes
Narrative & Display
Extensions (using and defining)
Must Understand & modifiers
References & ResourceIdentity
Contained Resources
Using the REST API
Create/Use Extension Methods
Best Practices
http://hl7.org/fhir/DSTU2/implementation.html#2.0.0.1

13. StringBuilder textContent = new StringBuilder();
textContent.AppendLine("<div
xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">");
textContent.AppendFormat("<b>{0}</b>rn<hr/>rn",
System.Web.HttpUtility.HtmlEncode(me.Name));
textContent.AppendFormatFHIRFields("version", "{0}",
System.Web.HttpUtility.HtmlEncode(versionDetails));
textContent.AppendLine("</div>");
resource.Text = new Narrative();
resource.Text.Status = Narrative.NarrativeStatus.Generated;
resource.Text.Div = textContent.ToString();
Narrative

14. var pat = new Patient();
pat.Name.Add(new
HumanName().WithGiven("Brian").AndFamily("Postlethwaite"));
var org = new Organization();
org.Id = Guid.NewGuid().ToString("n");
org.Name = "HL7 International";
pat.Contained.Add(org);
pat.ManagingOrganization = new ResourceReference()
{
Reference = "#" + org.Id,
Display = org.Name
};
Contained Resources

15. 1. Assembly(s), platforms and projects
2. GitHub branches
3. NuGET Package(s)
4. Don’t need code change to handle extensions/profiles
5. Already in use in production
6. Supported and used by multiple vendors today
7. Large and Growing community of contributors
8. Can be used server side too
.NET FHIR Client - recap

16. QUESTIONS?