Shape Expressions (ShEx) schemas for the FHIR R5 specification.

ABSTRACT

This work continues along a visionary path of using Semantic Web standards such as RDF and ShEx to make healthcare data easier to integrate for research and leading-edge patient care. The work extends the ability to use ShEx schemas to validate FHIR RDF data, thereby enhancing the semantic web ecosystem for working with FHIR and non-FHIR data using the same ShEx validation framework. It updates FHIR's ShEx schemas to fix outstanding issues and reflect changes in the definition of FHIR RDF. In addition, it experiments with expressing FHIRPath constraints (which are not captured in the XML or JSON schemas) in ShEx schemas. These extended ShEx schemas were incorporated into the FHIR R5 specification and used to successfully validate FHIR R5 examples that are included with the FHIR specification, revealing several errors in the examples.