A Decentralized Architecture for Semantic Interoperability of Personal Dental Data Based on FHIR

Abstract

Several problems arise due to the differences between dentistry and general medicine. The storage of dental data in information silos, the incompatibility of data between different dental clinics or institutions from other medical areas are the most significant ones. The authors propose a decentralized architecture that combines FHIR archetypes, shape expressions, and personal online datastores (PODs) to tackle those issues as follows: FHIR archetypes are used to express the data, shape expressions are used to handle data structure and data access requests, and PODs are used to store information in a decentralized and safe manner that let the owner of the information stored to handle data access. The system allows the patient to store dental information from heterogeneous data sources transparently and respecting the patient’s right to autonomy and consent. In this paper, the authors develop this architecture proposal and discuss its relevance and feasibility in the area of dental health.