Interoperability Is a Process - The Data Sharing Framework

Common syntax and data semantics are core components of healthcare interoperability standards. However, interoperable data exchange processes are also needed to enable the integration of existing systems between organizations. While solutions for healthcare delivery processes are available and have been widely adopted, support for processes targeting bio-medical research is limited. Our Data Sharing Framework creates a platform to implement research processes like cohort size estimation, reviews and approvals of research proposals, consent checks, record linkage, pseudonymization and data sharing across organizations. The described framework implements a distributed business process engine for executing BPMN 2.0 processes with synchronization and data exchange using FHIR R4 resources. Our reference implementation has been rolled out to 38 organizations across three research consortia in Germany and is available as open source under the Apache 2.0 license.