Integrate FHIR Data in the Pentaho Report Designer

The CData JDBC driver for FHIR data enables access to live data from dashboards and reports. This article shows how to connect to FHIR data as a JDBC data source and publish reports based on FHIR data in Pentaho.

Connect and Create a Report

1. Copy the JAR file of the driver, located in the lib subfolder of the installation directory, to the \Report-Designer\lib\jdbc\ folder in the Pentaho directory.
2. Run the report-designer.bat file in the \Report-Designer\ folder to open the Report-Designer UI.

3. Create a new data source with the driver by clicking Data -> Add Data Source -> Advanced -> JDBC (Custom) and then creating a new FHIR connection. In the resulting dialog, configure the connection properties as shown below.

   • Custom Connection URL property: Enter the JDBC URL. This starts with jdbc:fhir: and is followed by a semicolon-separated list of connection properties.

     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.

     Built-in Connection String Designer

     For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the FHIR JDBC Driver. Either double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command-line.

     java -jar cdata.jdbc.fhir.jar

     Fill in the connection properties and copy the connection string to the clipboard.

     When you configure the JDBC URL, you may also want to set the Max Rows connection property. This will limit the number of rows returned, which is especially helpful for improving performance when designing reports and visualizations.

     Below is a typical JDBC URL:

     jdbc:fhir:URL=http://test.fhir.org/r4b/;ConnectionType=Generic;ContentType=JSON;AuthScheme=None;
   • Custom Driver Class Name: Enter cdata.jdbc.fhir.FHIRDriver.
   • User Name: The username to authenticate with.
   • Password: The password to authenticate with.

Add FHIR Data to a Report

You are now ready to create a report with FHIR data.

1. Add the FHIR source to your report: Click Data -> Add Data Source -> JDBC and select the data source.

2. Configure the query. This article uses the one below:

   SELECT Id, [name-use] FROM Patient WHERE [address-city] = 'New York'
3. Drag a chart onto your report and double-click it to edit the chart. Run the report to display the chart. You can use the results of this query to create a simple chart for the Patient table.
4. Finally, run the report to see the chart.