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The FHIR ODBC Driver is a powerful tool that allows you to connect with live data from FHIR, directly from any applications that support ODBC connectivity.

Access FHIR data like you would a database - read, write, and update FHIR 0, etc. through a standard ODBC Driver interface.

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How to Access Live FHIR Data in Power Automate Desktop via ODBC


The CData ODBC Driver for FHIR enables you to integrate FHIR data into workflows built using Microsoft Power Automate Desktop.

The CData ODBC Driver for FHIR enables you to access live FHIR data in workflow automation tools like Power Automate. This article shows how to integrate FHIR data into a simple workflow, moving FHIR data into a CSV file.

Through optimized data processing, CData ODBC Drivers offer unmatched performance for interacting with live FHIR data in Microsoft Power Automate. When you issue complex SQL queries from Power Automate to FHIR, the driver pushes supported SQL operations, like filters and aggregations, directly to FHIR and utilizes the embedded SQL engine to process unsupported operations client-side (e.g. SQL functions and JOIN operations).

Connect to FHIR as an ODBC Data Source

If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

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.

When you configure the DSN, 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 workflows.

Integrate FHIR Data into Power Automate Workflows

After configuring the DSN for FHIR, you are ready to integrate FHIR data into your Power Automate workflows. Open Microsoft Power Automate, add a new flow, and name the flow.

In the flow editor, you can add the actions to connect to FHIR, query FHIR using SQL, and write the query results to a CSV document.

Add an Open SQL Connection Action

Add an "Open SQL connection" action (Actions -> Database) and configure the properties.

  • Connection string: DSN=CData FHIR Source

After configuring the action, click Save.

Add an Execute SQL Statement Action

Add an "Execute SQL statement" action (Actions -> Database) and configure the properties.

  • Get connection by: SQL connection variable
  • SQL connection: %SQLConnection% (the variable from the "Open SQL connection" action above)
  • SQL statement: SELECT * FROM Patient

After configuring the action, click Save.

Add a Write to CSV File Action

Add a "Write to CSV file" action (Actions -> File) and configure the properties.

  • Variable to write to: %QueryResult% (the variable from the "Execute SQL statement" action above)
  • File path: set to a file on disk
  • Configure Advanced settings as needed.

After configuring the action, click Save.

Add a Close SQL Connection Action

Add a "Close SQL connection" action (Actions -> Database) and configure the properties.

  • SQL Connection: %SQLConnection% (the variable from the "Open SQL connection" action above)

After configuring the action, click Save.

Save & Run the Flow

Once you have configured all the actions for the flow, click the disk icon to save the flow. Click the play icon to run the flow.

Now you have a workflow to move FHIR data into a CSV file.

With the CData ODBC Driver for FHIR, you get live connectivity to FHIR data within your Microsoft Power Automate workflows.

Related Power Automate Articles

This article walks through using the CData ODBC Driver for FHIR with Power Automate Desktop. Check out our other articles for more ways to work with Power Automate (Desktop & Online):