Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) in a FAIR Metadata Registry for COVID-19 Research.

Adopting international standards within health research communities can elevate data FAIRness and widen analysis possibilities. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the mapping feasibility against HL7® Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources® (FHIR)® of a generic metadata schema (MDS) created for a central search hub gathering COVID-19 health research (studies, questionnaires, documents = MDS resource types). Mapping results were rated by calculating the percentage of FHIR coverage. Among 86 items to map, total mapping coverage was 94%: 50 (58%) of the items were available as standard resources in FHIR and 31 (36%) could be mapped using extensions. Five items (6%) could not be mapped to FHIR. Analyzing each MDS resource type, there was a total mapping coverage of 93% for studies and 95% for questionnaires and documents, with 61% of the MDS items available as standard resources in FHIR for studies, 57% for questionnaires and 52% for documents. Extensions in studies, questionnaires and documents were used in 32%, 38% and 43% of items, respectively. This work shows that FHIR can be used as a standardized format in registries for clinical, epidemiological and public health research. However, further adjustments to the initial MDS are recommended - and two additional items even needed when implementing FHIR. Developing a MDS based on the FHIR standard could be a future approach to reduce data ambiguity and foster interoperability.

Facilitating Study and Item Level Browsing for Clinical and Epidemiological COVID-19 Studies.

COVID-19 poses a major challenge to individuals and societies around the world. Yet, it is difficult to obtain a good overview of studies across different medical fields of research such as clinical trials, epidemiology, and public health. Here, we describe a consensus metadata model to facilitate structured searches of COVID-19 studies and resources along with its implementation in three linked complementary web-based platforms. A relational database serves as central study metadata hub that secures compatibilities with common trials registries (e.g. ICTRP and standards like HL7 FHIR, CDISC ODM, and DataCite). The Central Search Hub was developed as a single-page application, the other two components with additional frontends are based on the SEEK platform and MICA, respectively. These platforms have different features concerning cohort browsing, item browsing, and access to documents and other study resources to meet divergent user needs. By this we want to promote transparent and harmonized COVID-19 research.