Question: #FHIR and Video support

May 5, 2020

Question:

I have a simple question, does R4 have the capability of storing video type data back into the EHR? Also, how do I identify the APIs that are able to accomplish this. And lastly, is there a timeline of when specific EHR vendors will implement this capability into their EHRs?

Answer:

There’s several parts to this answer:

FHIR Support for Video

Yes, the FHIR specification supports the Media Resource.

You can see that it supports video by Media.type, along with duration

Which APIs can do this?

Look in the server’s CapabilityStatement. Here’s the one from the base spec:

Does it list the Media resource in the CapabilityStatement? Does it support read and update? Does the profile indicate that video is supported? - that is, is listed in the value set for Media.type. The reference here is to the base spec, so the server claims to support the functionality.

But just because it makes the claim doesn’t mean that it does.

Timeline for EHR support

I haven’t heard anything about existing EHRs supporting video. In fact, it seems unlikely to me, just due to storage requirements

In a more general sense, DICOM might be a better way to go for video - I’d much rather use FHIR than DICOM, though the DICOM web specs are much easier to use than classic DICOM. But DICOM is relevant because the storage services are appropriate for this kind of content. But production storage services still mostly use classic DICOM, as far as I know.