FHIR questionnaires are a standardized way of representing clinical questionnaires. They are used in a variety of healthcare settings, including hospitals, clinics, and home health agencies.
Currently (August 2023), PSI uses conversational bots to collect information from clients. The flow of those conversations is defined in system like RapidPro, and the answers are stored on a FHIR backend, as QuestionnaireResponse resource. But in most cases we don’t have the associated Questionnaire, hence the metadata is missing.
FHIR Questionnaire (and by extension Bots) can be used to collect a diversity of contents in relation to the patient. Examples include:
A bot could be used to collect patient history information. This could help to ensure that all patients are asked the same questions, and that no important information is missed.
A bot could be used to provide education to patients. This could help patients to understand their condition and how to manage it.
A bot could be used to collect feedback from patients. This could help to improve the quality of care and patient satisfaction.
Proposed solution (Sept 2023)
In the context of being able to support USSD implementations, we will develop a simple FHIR Questionnaire Processor that can:
Use any FHIR Questionnaire to run a sequence of question/answers on a Bot or USSD session
Validate the user input in accordance to the constraints for the related Question Item
Return the next question as part of the API response body
Outputs a FHIR QuestionnaireResponse resource based on the answer provided.
This application should be usable by USSD and Bot implementations.
I/O
Initialization: http or file for FHIR Questionnaire
Flow/ Output: Next Question/ validation error current question.
Flow/Input: user input.
Final output: QuestionnaireResponse