HL7 FHIR Compliant Data Access Model for Maternal Health Information System

Abstract

Effective decision-making to improve healthcare for people depends essentially upon availability of reliable health data. Several developing countries have maternal health indicators lagging behind as compared to international targets set by the UN as Millennium or Sustainable Development Goals. One of the major reasons is poor and non-standardized maternal health record keeping that affect data quality and undermines evidence-based decision making. The aim of this research is the design and development of HL7 FHIR compliant data access model for maintaining maternal health data as FHIR resources to enable effective exchange of health data. The proposed model is implemented as restful web services and data is stored in a NoSQL database for flexibility. To evaluate effectiveness, the system was reviewed by healthcare providers and expectant women. Their feedback highlights the usefulness of the proposed system as compared to traditional record keeping techniques. It is anticipated that the proposed system will lay the foundation of a comprehensive maternal healthcare information system. This shall enable trend analysis for policy-making to help accelerate the efforts for meeting global maternal health targets.