Exercise - Connect to Azure Health Data Services by using FHIRlink

  • 6 minutes

In this exercise, you set up a new FHIRlink connection in your environment to an Azure Health Data Services FHIR service instance. This connection provides access to the FHIR services from your canvas apps, Power Automate flows, and logic apps from Azure Logic Apps.

In this task, you create a new FHIRlink connection to an Azure Health Data Services FHIR service instance and save it in your environment.

  1. Go to Power Apps.

  2. Select Connections on the left navigation pane.

    Screenshot of Power Apps with the Connections page selected.

  3. In the Search box in the upper right of the page, enter FHIRlink.

  4. Select FHIRlink from the list.

  5. An options dialog appears. Select the default Authentication Type and then enter the URL and URI for your Azure Health Data Services FHIR service.

    Screenshot of the options dialog with the U R L and U R I fields completed.

  6. Select Create. Enter the credentials for the user that has access to the Azure Health Data Services FHIR service.

    After you save, the new connection for FHIRlink shows as saved in your environment.

    Screenshot of Power Apps with the connection saved.

Now, you can use this connection in multiple canvas apps and Power Automate flows.

Test your connection with Power Automate

In this next task, you create a new Power Automate flow in your environment and then use the saved FHIRlink connection to query Azure Health Data Services FHIR service.

  1. Go to Power Apps.

  2. Select Flows on the left navigation and then select New flow from the dropdown menu.

  3. Select Instant cloud flow from the list of available templates.

  4. In the Build an instant cloud flow dialog, select Manually trigger a flow and then provide a Flow name, such as Test FHIRlink.

    Screenshot of the Build an instant cloud flow dialog with Manually trigger a flow and the Flow name highlighted.

  5. Select Create.

  6. In the flow editor, select + New step. In the Search connectors and actions field, enter FHIRlink to search for the FHIRlink connector.

  7. On the Actions tab, select the List resources by type action. This operation allows you to retrieve a bundle of FHIR resource records for a given FHIR resource type.

    Screenshot of the flow on the Actions tab with List resources by type highlighted.

  8. In the List resources by type action, select the ellipsis (...) in the upper right. In the lower part of the menu, the FHIRlink connection instance that you selected in the previous task should display. If you have more than one connection to FHIRlink, you can change it on this page.

    Screenshot of the flow showing the ellipsis icon selected to reveal the My connections setting.

  9. In the List resources by type action, select the Resource type dropdown menu. A list of all available FHIR resources that are supported by the Azure Health Data Services FHIR service should display. FHIRlink automatically retrieves this list by querying the $metadata endpoint.

  10. In the List resources by type action, in the Resource type field, search for and select Patient. Enter the name in the _elements field. This step restricts the data elements that are returned in the FHIR resources. Additionally, this step corresponds to the _elements parameter that you defined in the FHIR API specification.

    Screenshot of the flow showing the List resources by type action. The Resource type is set to Patient, and the elements field is set to name.

  11. Select Save.

  12. From the upper-right corner of the flow editor, select Test. In the dialog, select Manually and then select Test from the lower part of the pane.

  13. Follow the steps to complete and run your flow. After the flow is complete, expand the List resources by type element. In this view, you can review the results of the flow. You can observe the inputs to the FHIRlink connector making the call to Azure Health Data Services FHIR service: the Patient resource and name element. The Outputs section displays the results of the call to retrieve Patients in the form of a FHIR JSON bundle.

    Screenshot of the List resources by type element expanded.

The resulting FHIR JSON bundle indicates that the connection to the Azure Health Data Services FHIR service is correct and can retrieve data.

In this exercise, you created a new FHIRlink connection. You used a Power Automate flow to test this link by retrieving a list of Patient records that are saved in your Azure Health Data Services FHIR service.

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