Automated Verification of Structured Questionnaires Using HL7® FHIR®

Informed consent of patients to research studies is a cornerstone to modern healthcare, which has lead to considerable administrative effort. The purpose of this paper is to show how forms and questionnaires and their respective answers can be captured in a standardized, structured way, in order to enable automated verification. The use of the HL7 FHIR resources Questionnaire and QuestionnaireResponse is discussed with respect to the different implementation options of Extensions, POST Interceptors, FHIR Operations, and CDS Hooks. These four approaches are described and it is determined whether they produce standard-compliant results and how they can be integrated with other solutions. Since all approaches yield advantages and disadvantages, the choice amongst any option must be based on the actual use case.