Testing Tools

Since the introduction of the Fast Health Interoperability Resources (FHIR) Standard, a lot of improvements have been made to bring it to today’s mature state. Each change in the standard may affect the systems that work together to make the data interoperable. Therefore, a comprehensive testing process is required to ensure the collaborative operation of different systems.

A minute deviation from the standard can cause Health IT System vendors to incur a huge loss in terms of time and money. With the help of a rigorous testing process, any such deviations from the HL7® FHIR Specification and the Implementation Guides can be traced before deploying it into real environment. Testing ensures system developers build to meet certification requirements. Testing mitigates risk and cost associated with software development that has to be re-engineered if it misses its mark.

A testing toolbox can help developers to meet and address the continuously developing interoperability specification. Most of the FHIR Standard testing tools provide the new set of specifications to compare against an existing system. It is a convenient and effective method to find and resolve any compatibility issues.

The FHIR Testing platform provides all the basic infrastructure required to run a test. It enables developers to run basic FHIR test and tests built for specific implementation Guides such as Da Vinci Provider Directory. System developers can get feedback on their development initiatives to adjust their code to meet interoperability requirements. Evaluation of peer-to-peer tests in different information architectures can be done through the platform to ensure the workability of standards.

You can consider following tools to test your FHIR based applications:

Testing Tool Reference Link(s) Description

Inferno

https://inferno.healthit.gov/

 

https://www.devdays.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Testing-HL7%C2%AE-FHIR%C2%AE-Implementation-Guides-with-Inferno-DevDays-2020-Virtual.pdf

 

Inferno is a testing suite for HL7® FHIR. It provides all the necessary options and configurations that can help developers to implement the FHIR standard consistently. It comes in two editions – Inferno Program Edition and Inferno Community Edition. The following are the features of Inferno:

  • It is an open source FHIR testing tool.
  • Inferno is a streamlined FHIR Server testing tool that is use-case / implementation guide focused.
  • ONC 2015 Edition Cures Update API Tests (Program Edition)
  • Inferno provides tests verifying conformance to the Standardized API for Patient and Population Services criterion § 170.315(g)(10) in the 2015 Edition Cures Update.
  • Additional FHIR Implementation Guide Tests.
  • Inferno will make it easier to write or reuse tests assessing conformance to other FHIR Implementation Guides with flexibility to test non-FHIR requirements.

Crucible

https://projectcrucible.org/

 

Crucible is a suite of open source testing tools for HL7® FHIR®. Being an open source tool, it helps in a wide-spread testing of the FHIR Standard to promote correct FHIR implementations. It provides almost all the prerequisite configurations, such as conformance to the FHIR standard, score patient records for completeness, and generate synthetic patient data, to have a full-fledged testing environment.

Touchstone

https://touchstone.aegis.net/touchstone/

 

Touchstone is an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Testing as a Service (TaaS) Open Access Solution for health information exchange.

Touchstone allows for automated, internet-based interoperability FHIR Testing against the HL7 FHIR specifications and standards. It plays an active role in the HL7 Conformance Testing community, the HL7 Argonaut Project, and the HSPC Implementation community.

HAPI

http://hapifhir.io

HAPI FHIR Reference Server

Supports all resources and many FHIR features including Subscriptions, Terminology Services, etc.

Fully open source (Apache 2.0 License)

Project information: http://hapifhir.io

Endpoints:

Web UI: http://hapi.fhir.org

DSTU2 Endpoint: http://hapi.fhir.org/baseDstu2

STU3 Endpoint: http://hapi.fhir.org/baseDstu3

R4 Endpoint: http://hapi.fhir.org/baseR4

R5 Endpoint: http://hapi.fhir.org/baseR5