Join a community of interest
Standards and specifications to electronically share health information consistently, safely and reliably
Support for digital health implementations
Resources and enablers to accelerate clinical interoperability
What's going on in clinical interoperability and digital health
What this site is about, future plans and how to reach us
LEADERS
Karen Hay, Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care
Soma Sarkar, Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care
KEY RESOURCES
Public Health Agency of Canada
INFOCENTRAL RESOURCES
Communicable Disease Workgroup Final Deliverables
pan-Canadian Immunization Messaging and Terminology Standards
Clinical Requirements - Immunization Interoperability
Click Manage documents to:
Note: Group members are not currently notified when new documents are added. To notify others, you must post the URL to the new document in the forum. (Notification of document uploads is a feature in development.)
Final documents and materials originating from the Communicable Disease Working Group.
Final documents and materials originating from the Immunization Interoperability Working Group .
Published on May 17, 2018 by Tara Mawhinney
Published on Feb 11, 2016 by Wendy Huang
The Canadian FHIR® Registry supports collaborative development in an effort to accelerate sustainable growth of FHIR, locally and internationally. The registry is the home of national FHIR profiles recommended for use in Canada, including extensions, value sets, URIs and other useful, commonly used components. It is also host to a growing number of national, jurisdictional and locally shared FHIR projects, and is open to all Canadian implementers.
The Canadian FHIR Registry offers:
The Canadian FHIR Registry blends software development best practices with the requirements of modelling in FHIR, essential to delivering successful project requirements while having continuous access to structure validation, rendering and publishing.
Organization projects can be viewed without logging in. To edit or request a new project, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. with the details.
View projects in the Canadian FHIR Registry
Simplifier.net should not be used in a production setting, as 24/7 support is not provided by Infoway or Firely®.
A project created in the Canadian FHIR Registry can be linked to an existing GitHub account. GitHub serves as a secondary backup and can sync the content in the project accordingly. Read details on how to set this up.
Users of the Canadian FHIR Registry on the Simplifier platform can expect the following response time from the Firely team for any issue encountered.
Issue | Premium Support | Description |
High Priority |
|
Work halts and affects a large number of users |
Medium Priority |
|
Able to continue working but affects a small number of users |
Low Priority |
|
Able to continue work and affects a couple of users |
Tickets |
|
Able to influence the product’s road map |
Read an overview of the Service Level Agreement between Infoway and Simplifier.net.
All project artifacts are backed up weekly at midnight on Sundays. Each snapshot will be retained for 10 days. The project owner can request an as-is snapshot containing all the necessary artifacts such as text, xml, json, md and image files by contacting This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
As per the statement issued on the Firely blog, Securing the future of Forge, the free version of Forge will be licensed for non-commercial use only starting January 1, 2020. To continue using Forge, users will need to be part of a paid plan on Simplifer.net. The current contract between Infoway and Firely for Simplifier.net allows for an unlimited number of users of Forge. Infoway has received confirmation from Firely that this will remain unaffected until December 31, 2021. If the authors in Simplifier.net belong to projects that are part of the Canadian FHIR Registry, they will be given rights through the administration processes of the platform conducted by Infoway.
The Canadian URI Project is a repository of identifier and code system namespaces. Capturing key metadata as FHIR® NamingSystem resources provides an automatic mapping of OIDs to URIs or vice versa.
To make the discovery of these artifacts more flexible, the Canadian URI Registry (alpha) was developed to allow artifacts to be queried via plain text, OID, URI or their respective identifiers. These identifiers are created according to the URI guidelines and posted to the FHIR Solution Architecture Workstream for approval.
It is important to note that all searchable artifacts are to be curated via the Canadian URI Project in Simplifier. There are ongoing discussions with the FHIR Solution Architecture Stream to have a single representative manage data for their respective jurisdictions.
A scheduled task is run periodically, making all new or modified artifacts searchable after a 20 minute window.
FHIR Terminology Service APIs enable automated exchange of clinical terminology content and resources. It allows developers to easily implement healthcare applications that programmatically consume codes and subsets without requiring in-depth expertize in the fine details of terminology.
A Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) is a globally unique string of characters that provides a simple and extensible means for identifying a resource. URIs are used to identify a namespace or the location of a resource. URIs are human-readable and offer the potential for resolvability. The HL7 FHIR® specification recommends using URIs to have all resources resolvable and to comply with the FHIR RESTful paradigm.
See a flowchart of the FHIR URI Registration Process (pdf).
HAPI FHIR® is a simple-but-powerful library for adding FHIR messaging to applications. It is pure Java compatible and licensed under the business-friendly Apache Software License, version 2.0.
Open source integration tools useful for health IT integration projects.
HAPI for HL7 v2 messages is an open-source, object oriented HL7 v2.x parser developed for the Java platform
HAPI FHIR is a simple-but-powerful library for adding FHIR messaging to your application. It is pure Java compatible and licensed under the business-friendly Apache Software License, version 2.0.
HAPI for HL7 v2 messages is an open-source, object oriented HL7 v2.x parser developed for the Java platform.
HL7 Explorer retired on November 29, 2019 with no further updates or maintenance. Access will continue “as is”.
Please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you have any questions or concerns.
Infoway HL7 Explorer is a powerful browser for HL7 v3 structures, vocabulary and references. Used in conjunction with the pan-Canadian releases, HL7 Explorer makes locating details and information more efficient.
In November 2017, the Canadian HL7 InfoCentral community determined that there was no longer any need to do further updates to the pan-Canadian Version 3 messages. As a result, the December 2012 releases of MR02.06.01 and CeRx 4.4.2 are the latest pan-Canadian publications of these standardized messages.
The HL7 Explorer, the Master Terminology Worksheet (MTW) and all other messaging related artifacts are aligned with the latest releases.
Infoway Request Management System (InfoRMS) is Infoway's request for change (RFC) tool for SNOMED CT®, pCLOCD/LOINC® and pan-Canadian Subsets. Not sure if you have access to InfoRMS? Manage your InfoRMS Access in your user profile.
In order to ensure that SNOMED CT RFCs are addressed in an efficient and timely manner, it is the requestor's responsbility to:
Prior to submitting a pCLOCD/LOINC request, it is the requestor's responsibility to:
Prior to submitting a Subset request, it is the requestor's responsibility to:
Message Builder retired November 29, 2019 and is no longer supported. The source code and all supporting documentation is available as-is on GitHub:
Please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you have any questions or concerns.
Message ReMixer retired on November 29, 2019 and is no longer accessible.
Please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you have any questions or concerns.
Pan-Canadian Standards use Object Identifiers (OIDs) to distinguish between objects by assigning a numeric string that enables other systems to understand the unique information that is being shared between various systems.
Canada Health Infoway (Infoway) has an arrangement in place with HL7 International that allows Infoway to submit OIDs to HL7 International on behalf of Canadian Implementers free of charge. There is a $250 USD fee per OID request if done directly with HL7 International.
To submit an OID, download the registration form that corresponds to your OID request.
Registration Forms
SNOMED International's SNOMED CT® browser allows users to browse and search the SNOMED CT International Edition to explore concepts and relationships. It also provides access to browse national extensions from SNOMED International member countries including the Canadian Edition of SNOMED CT in English and French.
Terminology Gateway is a web based solution framework that enables the distribution and sharing of terminology concepts, subsets and concept maps, making them available for web browsing, download or real time query.
Browse Terminology Gateway Now
Terminology Service RESTful APIs enable automated exchange of clinical terminology content and resources. It allows developers to easily implement healthcare applications that programmatically consume codes and subsets without requiring in-depth expertise in the details of terminology.
Apelon’s TermManager is a web-based data mapping solution which is provided by request for free to individuals who have Standards Access. It provides comprehensive mapping capability to SNOMED CT® and the Canadian Edition of SNOMED CT with multi-user work flow options and flexible output formats.
Apelon’s TermWorks is an easy-to-use data mapping solution that is provided by request (free of charge) to individuals who have Standards Access. It brings powerful terminology capabilities directly to the desktop. TermWorks combines Microsoft® Excel® spreadsheet software with web services-based terminology processing to give organizations comprehensive mapping capability to SNOMED CT® and the Canadian Edition of SNOMED CT.
A webhook is an HTTP callback. When new content is published in the Terminology Gateway, a publishing event will be POSTed to each registered webhook, notifying their respective owners about the publication.
Individual users can register for webhook notifications by sending an email to: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and specifying the webhook endpoint. Upon registration, a unique api_id will be assigned to the webhook. Each notification POSTed by the Terminology Gateway will contain the api_id, allowing the endpoint to verify that the notification was indeed issued by the Terminology Gateway. The api_id must be echoed back by the webhook endpoint in the body of the notification response.
The webhook endpoint must serve HTTP requests conforming to the following interface:
{ "api_id": "cb570e5a2748f349f9119431db836b3a23fdb6571afee34c0432d87220f2431b", "base_url": "https://termapi.infoway-inforoute.ca/rest/v1/", "notification_time": "2017110711:07:00", "targets": [ { "id": "2.16.840.1.113883.2.20.6.1", "name": "Canadian Clinical Drug Data Set (CCDD)", "type": "package", "version": "20171016", "effective_date": "20171016", "publication_time": "2017103015:20:23", "message": "Monthly CCDD update for October 2017" }, { "id": "2.16.840.1.113883.2.20.3.443", "name": "PrescribeIT", "type": "package", "version": "LPR2", "effective_date": "20171103", "publication_time": "2017110309:37:22", "message": "PrescriptionMedicinalCode version reflecting the October 2017 CCDD update" } ] }
HTTP Response code: 200 for success, any other response code will be interpreted as an error
Sample HTTP Response Body:
{ "api_id": "cb570e5a2748f349f9119431db836b3a23fdb6571afee34c0432d87220f2431b", "result": "success", "message": "Successful processing of the webhook notification" }
When receiving an error as a result of a webhook notification, the Terminology Gateway will retry the notification four times at 15 minutes intervals. If still unsuccessful after four notification attempts, the system will drop the notification and will notify the user by email that the webhook couldn't be invoked.
Demo code for a sample webhook endpoint can be found here:
Improving the quality of patient care through the effective sharing of clinical information among health care organizations, clinicians and their patients.