Azure Health Data Services Toolkit

The Azure Health Data Services Toolkit helps you extend the functionality of Azure Health Data Services by providing a consistent toolset to build custom operations to modify the core service behavior. With the growth of health data workloads on Azure, we’ve found that developers need custom behavior on top of our services. This toolkit abstracts common patterns so you can focus on delivering your use cases.

NuGet Packages

Package Name	Description
Microsoft.AzureHealth.DataServices.Core	.NET 6 toolkit for creating custom operations when using Azure Health Data Services.
Microsoft.AzureHealth.DataServices.Channels.Extensions	.NET 6 toolkit for extending channels using Azure Health Data Services.
Microsoft.AzureHealth.DataServices.Caching	.NET 6 toolkit for adding caching using Azure Health Data Services.
Microsoft.AzureHealth.DataServices.Storage	.NET 6 toolkit to simplify Azure storage operations when using Azure Health Data Services.

Getting started

The fastest way to test out the toolkit and see it in action is through our Quickstart sample. This sample will walk you through some common patterns that you'll need to create custom operations for Azure Health Data Services.

Read the developer guide for help setting up your local and cloud environment for developing custom behaviors for Azure Health Data Services.

Also check out our full list of samples on how to use the toolkit here for even more inspiration on how to create your own custom operations.

Common Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR®) use cases

Some FHIR service use cases that this toolkit can help you implement are:

• FHIR operations not supported by the FHIR Service yet.
  • Trial implementation guides.
  • Organization-specific operations.
  • Less widely adopted operations.
• Implementation guide development.
• Transforming request and/or response payloads.
• Custom authorization logic (like consent, etc.).

Key Concepts

For detailed information, read the concept guide here.

When we say “custom operations” we are talking about a purpose-built solution which acts as a proxy for a single or small set of HTTP endpoints. This toolkit is here to simplify developing such solutions. It’s recommended to use Azure API Management or similar for routing certain requests to these custom operations so that the client only sees one endpoint. Azure API Management can also present a unified authorization experience to your clients. This is why our samples don’t have authorization on the endpoints.

When building custom operations, you’ll come across these concepts related to the toolkit.

• Operation Context: Common object passed between components of a pipeline containing the request and response.
• Pipeline: Container for the actions of custom operations with filters, channels, and bindings executed in the order shown below.
  • Filter: A unit of action that modifies the request and/or result via the Operation Context. Filters can be chained together in a single input/output section of a pipeline.
  • Channel: Used to output data in a pipeline to an external system actor (ESA). This is usually an Azure service (like Storage, Event Hub, and/or Service Bus).
  • Binding: The target service for a custom operation (usually a FHIR service). This can be null for custom operations that don't need to have a destination.

What about the FHIR Proxy?

FHIR Proxy was created in response to customer requests for customizing the Azure API for FHIR. With the release of Azure Health Data Services, we’ve come up with a new approach to customization.

• This toolkit lets you go beyond the proxy pattern and gives you tools for more extensive customization with programmatic components that flexibly connect to the broader Azure ecosystem.
• This toolkit is designed to be used in smaller operation-specific modules. If you are customizing a certain behavior, you don’t need to proxy the rest of your API calls.
• This toolkit is compute-agnostic and can be deployed on any .NET 6.0 server like Azure Functions, Azure App Service, Azure Kubernetes Service, etc.
• This toolkit is released and versioned via NuGet packages.
• We have designed this toolkit with coding best practices in mind, like object-oriented pipelines and extended testing.

If there is functionality in the FHIR Proxy that is not covered by the Health Data Services toolkit, please submit an issue and we will look into adding a sample!

Resources

Links

• FHIR Service Documentation
• FHIR Server OSS Repository

Sample production architecture

This architecture is a sample of how you could deploy and integrate custom operations built with the Azure Health Data Services toolkit in a production environment with Azure Health Data Services.

Contributing

This project welcomes contributions and suggestions. Most contributions require you to agree to a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) declaring that you have the right to, and actually do, grant us the rights to use your contribution. For details, visit https://cla.opensource.microsoft.com.

When you submit a pull request, a CLA bot will automatically determine whether you need to provide a CLA and decorate the PR appropriately (e.g., status check, comment). Simply follow the instructions provided by the bot. You will only need to do this once across all repos using our CLA.

This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct. For more information see the Code of Conduct FAQ or contact [email protected] with any additional questions or comments.

Disclaimers

The Azure Health Data Services toolkit is an open-source project. It is not a managed service, and it is not part of Microsoft Azure Health Data Services. You bear sole responsibility for compliance with local law and for any data you use with this open-source toolkit. Please review the information and licensing terms on this GitHub website before using the Azure Health Data Services toolkit.

The Azure Health Data Services toolkit GitHub is intended only for use in transferring and formatting data. It is not intended for use as a medical device or to perform any analysis or any medical function and the performance of the software for such purposes has not been established. You bear sole responsibility for any use of this software, including incorporation into any product intended for a medical purpose.

Trademarks

This project may contain trademarks or logos for projects, products, or services. Authorized use of Microsoft trademarks or logos is subject to and must follow Microsoft's Trademark & Brand Guidelines. Use of Microsoft trademarks or logos in modified versions of this project must not cause confusion or imply Microsoft sponsorship. Any use of third-party trademarks or logos are subject to those third-party's policies.

FHIR® is the registered trademark of HL7 and is used with the permission of HL7.