Query, Visualize, and Share live FHIR Data in Redash

Redash is a collaboration tool that lets you query, visualize, and share your data. When paired with CData Connect Cloud, Redash gets access to live FHIR data. This article demonstrates how to connect to FHIR using Connect Cloud and work with live FHIR data in Redash.

CData Connect Cloud provides a pure SQL Server interface for FHIR, allowing you to query data from FHIR without replicating the data to a natively supported database. Using optimized data processing out of the box, CData Connect Cloud pushes all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc.) directly to FHIR, leveraging server-side processing to return the requested FHIR data quickly.

Configure FHIR Connectivity for Redash

Connectivity to FHIR from Redash is made possible through CData Connect Cloud. To work with FHIR data in Redash, we start by creating and configuring a FHIR connection.

1. Log into Connect Cloud, click Connections and click Add Connection
2. Select "FHIR" from the Add Connection panel
3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to FHIR.

   Set URL to the Service Base URL of the FHIR server. This is the address where the resources are defined in the FHIR server you would like to connect to. Set ConnectionType to a supported connection type. Set ContentType to the format of your documents. Set AuthScheme based on the authentication requirements for your FHIR server.

   Generic, Azure-based, AWS-based, and Google-based FHIR server implementations are supported.

   Sample Service Base URLs

   • Generic: http://my_fhir_server/r4b/
   • Azure: https://MY_AZURE_FHIR.azurehealthcareapis.com/
   • AWS: https://healthlake.REGION.amazonaws.com/datastore/DATASTORE_ID/r4/
   • Google: https://healthcare.googleapis.com/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/LOCATION/datasets/DATASET_ID/fhirStores/FHIR_STORE_ID/fhir/

   Generic FHIR Instances

   The product supports connections to custom instances of FHIR. Authentication to custom FHIR servers is handled via OAuth (read more about OAuth in the Help documentation. Before you can connect to custom FHIR instances, you must set ConnectionType to Generic.

4. Click Create & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add FHIR Connection page and update the User-based permissions.

Add a Personal Access Token

If you are connecting from a service, application, platform, or framework that does not support OAuth authentication, you can create a Personal Access Token (PAT) to use for authentication. Best practices would dictate that you create a separate PAT for each service, to maintain granularity of access.

1. Click on your username at the top right of the Connect Cloud app and click User Profile.
2. On the User Profile page, scroll down to the Personal Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
3. Give your PAT a name and click Create.
4. The personal access token is only visible at creation, so be sure to copy it and store it securely for future use.

Connect to FHIR from Redash using Connect Cloud

To establish a connection from Redash to CData Connect Cloud using the SQL Server API, follow these steps.

1. Log into Redash.
2. Click the settings widget on the top right.
3. Click New Data Source.
4. Select Microsoft SQL Server as the Data Source Type.
5. On the configuration tab, set the following properties:
   • Database Name: enter the Connection Name of the CData Connect Cloud data source you want to connect to (for example, Salesforce1).
   • Server: enter the virtual SQL Server host name (tds.cdata.com)
   • User: enter your CData Connect Cloud username. This is displayed in the top-right corner of the CData Connect Cloud interface. For example, [email protected].
   • Password: enter the PAT you generated on the Settings page.
   • Port: enter 14333
6. Click Create.
7. Click Test Connection to ensure that the connection is configured properly.

You can now work with live FHIR data in Redash.

Get CData Connect Cloud

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