Electronic Health Records Source & Format

MyDataHelps can collect electronic health records (EHR) from participants in three ways and deliver them in two formats. Choosing what fits your project comes down to two decisions:

• Source: Where the records come from—a direct EHR connection, Apple HealthKit Clinical Records, and/or Health Connect medical records.
• Format: How the data is structured in your export, FHIR or FHIR + OMOP.

At a Glance

Choosing a Source

You can mix and match any of the three sources for EHR data—direct EHR connection, Apple HealthKit Clinical Records, and Health Connect medical records.

Direct EHR Connection

With a direct connection, participants sign in to their provider's or health plan's patient portal from MyDataHelps. MyDataHelps then retrieves their records using FHIR connectivity standards. Once a participant connects, new records are collected in the background, even when they aren't using the app.

• Devices: Mobile or web. Participants connect through a Connect EHR survey step or a Connect EHR dashboard component.
• Organizations: Healthcare providers and health plans in the United States that support FHIR. Health plans can add data that providers may not have, such as claims and coverage.
• Data: A broad set of record types, including conditions, medications, lab results and other observations, immunizations, allergies, procedures, encounters, diagnostic reports, care plans and clinical documents. See the FHIR Interface Documentation for the full list of supported resources.
• Setup: Requires approval from CareEvolution. Once approved, enable it in your project's Sensor & EHR Data tab. See Electronic Health Record (EHR) Data for details.

Apple HealthKit Clinical Records

With HealthKit Clinical Records, participants first link their healthcare provider to the Health app on their iPhone. They can then share selected records with MyDataHelps. This permission is separate from the rest of their Apple Health data, and only the records they choose are shared.

• Devices: iPhone only.
• Organizations: Healthcare institutions that support Apple Health Records.
• Data: A fixed set of record types defined by Apple: allergies, clinical notes, conditions, immunizations, lab results, medications, procedures and vital signs. See Apple's HealthKit FHIR Resource Type article for details.
• Setup: Collected as part of Apple Health data. See Sensor Data Services for details.

Health Connect Medical Records

Health Connect is the Android counterpart to Apple Health. Participants add their health records to Health Connect on their Android phone, then share selected records with MyDataHelps. As with Apple Health, this permission is separate from the rest of their Health Connect data.

• Devices: Android only.
• Organizations: Healthcare institutions that support Health Connect medical records.
• Data: A fixed set of record types defined by Google, including allergies, conditions, lab results, medications, procedures, vaccines, visits and vital signs. See Google's Medical Records data format article for details.
• Setup: Collected as part of Health Connect data. See Sensor Data Services for details.

Choosing a Format

All projects collecting EHR data will have a FHIR export. In addition to the FHIR data, you can request OMOP data. OMOP exports require additional processing to convert the FHIR data to the OMOP Common Data Model, so they aren’t listed as an available data type in Export Settings. Please contact us if you are interested in OMOP.

FHIR

Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) is the HL7 standard that EHR systems use to share data. FHIR splits a medical record into individual resources, such as a Condition, Observation or MedicationRequest, each stored as a JSON document. Resources keep the codes and detail recorded by the source system and reference one another. For example, a lab result can reference the visit where it was ordered.

FHIR is a good fit when you want the data as close to the source as possible or you work with FHIR-based tools. Because resources are nested JSON, you will usually need to flatten them into tables before analysis.

How FHIR data appears depends on which export you use:

• FhirBulk: Records from all three sources, one file per resource type, all in FHIR R4. See the Electronic Health Record (EHR) Export Overview.
• HealthKitV2: One file per record type, with HealthKit details and the original FHIR resource in each row, which can be DSTU2 or R4. See the Apple HealthKitV2 Clinical Records Export Format.

OMOP

The Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership (OMOP) Common Data Model is a research data model maintained by the OHDSI community. Instead of resources, data is organized into a set of standard tables, such as person, visit occurrence, condition occurrence, drug exposure and measurement. Codes are mapped to standard vocabularies, such as SNOMED CT for conditions, RxNorm for medications and LOINC for lab results, so records from different providers can be queried the same way.

OMOP is a good fit when your team analyzes data with SQL or OHDSI tools, or combines it with other OMOP datasets. Mapping to OMOP standardizes the data, but some source detail doesn't carry over. You'll still have FHIR data if you need records exactly as the provider sent them.

OMOP isn't available in Export Settings. If you are interested in receiving data in OMOP, please contact us.