VOOZH about

URL: https://www.cdata.com/kb/tech/fhir-cloud-appsmith.rst

⇱ Create FHIR-Connected Applications in Appsmith

Create FHIR-Connected Applications in Appsmith

👁 Cameron Leblanc
Cameron Leblanc
Senior Technology Evangelist
Connect to FHIR Data via CData Connect AI in Appsmith and create custom business applications with real-time access to FHIR data.

Appsmith is an open-source internal tool builder that allows teams to quickly and easily build a UI to help improve their business operations. When combined with CData Connect AI, you gain immediate access to FHIR data for business applications. This article outlines the process of connecting to FHIR using Connect AI and creating a basic application from FHIR data within Appsmith.

CData Connect AI offers a pure SQL Server, cloud-to-cloud interface for FHIR, enabling the creation of business applications directly from live FHIR data within Appsmith, all without the need for data replication to a native database. As you build applications, Appsmith generates SQL queries to gather data. With its inherent optimized data processing capabilities, CData Connect AI efficiently channels all supported SQL operations, including filters and JOINs, directly to FHIR. This leverages server-side processing to swiftly deliver the requested FHIR data.

Configure FHIR Connectivity for Appsmith

Connectivity to FHIR from Appsmith is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with FHIR data from Appsmith, we start by creating and configuring a FHIR connection.

  1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
    2. 👁 Adding a Connection
  2. Select "FHIR" from the Add Connection panel
    3. 👁 Selecting a data source
  3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to FHIR.

    Set URL to the Service Base URL of the FHIR server. This is the address where the resources are defined in the FHIR server you would like to connect to. Set ConnectionType to a supported connection type. Set ContentType to the format of your documents. Set AuthScheme based on the authentication requirements for your FHIR server.

    Generic, Azure-based, AWS-based, and Google-based FHIR server implementations are supported.

    Sample Service Base URLs

    • Generic: http://my_fhir_server/r4b/
    • Azure: https://MY_AZURE_FHIR.azurehealthcareapis.com/
    • AWS: https://healthlake.REGION.amazonaws.com/datastore/DATASTORE_ID/r4/
    • Google: https://healthcare.googleapis.com/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/LOCATION/datasets/DATASET_ID/fhirStores/FHIR_STORE_ID/fhir/

    Generic FHIR Instances

    The product supports connections to custom instances of FHIR. Authentication to custom FHIR servers is handled via OAuth (read more about OAuth in the Help documentation. Before you can connect to custom FHIR instances, you must set ConnectionType to Generic.

    👁 Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)
  4. Click Save & Test
  5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add FHIR Connection page and update the User-based permissions. 👁 Updating permissions

Add a Personal Access Token

When connecting to Connect AI through the REST API, the OData API, or the Virtual SQL Server, a Personal Access Token (PAT) is used to authenticate the connection to Connect AI. It is best practice to create a separate PAT for each service to maintain granularity of access.

  1. Click on the Gear icon () at the top right of the Connect AI app to open the settings page.
  2. On the Settings page, go to the Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
  3. Give the PAT a name and click Create. 👁 Creating a new PAT
  4. The personal access token is only visible at creation, so be sure to copy it and store it securely for future use.

With the connection configured and a PAT generated, we are ready to connect to FHIR data from Appsmith.

Create an Appsmith Application from live FHIR Data

To establish a connection from Appsmith to the CData Connect AI Virtual SQL Server, follow these steps:

Connect to FHIR in Appsmith

  1. Log in to your Appsmith instance and create a new application.
  2. In the new application, open the Data page and select Bring your data. 👁 Open the Data page
  3. On this page, you can search for Microsoft SQL Server and select it as your data source. 👁 Select Microsoft SQL Server datasource
  4. Enter a name for the new data source and then enter the following connection settings:
  5. Click Test configuration to confirm a successful connection, then click Save to save the datasource.

Create a new query

With a connection configured to a datasource, we can add a SQL query to actually retrieve data from the data source.

  1. On the screen with the new data source, click New Query. 👁 Create a New Query
  2. This opens the Query Editor to enter a SQL query to select data. To assist with specifying a SQL query, use the Explorer of CData Connect AI to preview the SQL queries and the data you want to retrieve. 👁 Preview queries in the Explorer
  3. After creating the SQL query, return to the Query Editor in Appsmith and enter the SQL query, then click Run. 👁 Run the SQL query
  4. Once the query successfully runs, all that remains is to set up the Page to display the data retrieved.

Display FHIR data

  1. Open the UI tab and click New UI element. 👁 New UI element
  2. Choose a new UI element to grab, then drag and place the element on the page. 👁 New UI element
  3. Click Connect data on the new UI element, then select the query previously created. 👁 Connect to data
  4. With the data connected, it is then displayed in the UI element. 👁 UI element connected

Deploy the application

With the FHIR data connected to the UI elements in the application, we can deploy the Application. To do this, click Deploy in the top-right corner of Appsmith, then the application is opened in a separate window displaying the FHIR data.

👁 Application deployed

Get CData Connect AI

To get live data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications, try CData Connect AI today!