Create Reports from FHIR Data in Looker Studio

Looker Studio, formerly known as Google Data Studio, empowers users to craft customized reports featuring data visualizations that can be shared with clients while reflecting your brand identity. When combined with CData Connect Cloud, you gain immediate cloud-to-cloud access to FHIR data to create visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article provides step-by-step instructions on establishing a virtual database for FHIR and generating reports from FHIR data within Looker Studio.

CData Connect Cloud offers a seamless cloud-to-cloud interface tailored for FHIR, making it straightforward to construct reports directly from live FHIR data within Looker Studio without the need for data replication. As you create visualizations, Looker Studio generates queries to retrieve data. With its inherent optimized data processing capabilities, CData Connect Cloud efficiently channels all supported query operations, including filters, JOINs, and more, directly to FHIR. This leverages server-side processing to swiftly provide the requested FHIR data.

Configure FHIR Connectivity for Looker Studio

Connectivity to FHIR from Looker Studio is made possible through CData Connect Cloud. To work with FHIR data from Looker Studio, we start by creating and configuring a FHIR connection.

1. Log into Connect Cloud, click Connections and click Add Connection
2. Select "FHIR" from the Add Connection panel
3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to FHIR.

   Set URL to the Service Base URL of the FHIR server. This is the address where the resources are defined in the FHIR server you would like to connect to. Set ConnectionType to a supported connection type. Set ContentType to the format of your documents. Set AuthScheme based on the authentication requirements for your FHIR server.

   Generic, Azure-based, AWS-based, and Google-based FHIR server implementations are supported.

   Sample Service Base URLs

   • Generic: http://my_fhir_server/r4b/
   • Azure: https://MY_AZURE_FHIR.azurehealthcareapis.com/
   • AWS: https://healthlake.REGION.amazonaws.com/datastore/DATASTORE_ID/r4/
   • Google: https://healthcare.googleapis.com/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/LOCATION/datasets/DATASET_ID/fhirStores/FHIR_STORE_ID/fhir/

   Generic FHIR Instances

   The product supports connections to custom instances of FHIR. Authentication to custom FHIR servers is handled via OAuth (read more about OAuth in the Help documentation. Before you can connect to custom FHIR instances, you must set ConnectionType to Generic.

4. Click Create & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add FHIR Connection page and update the User-based permissions.

With the connection configured, you are ready to connect to FHIR data from Looker Studio.

Visualize Live FHIR Data from Looker Studio

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect Cloud from Looker Studio to create a new FHIR data source and build a simple visualization from the data.

1. Log into Looker Studio, click data sources, create a new data source, and choose CData Connect Cloud Connector.
2. Click Authorize and allow access to your Google account.
3. Click Authorize to authenticate with your CData Connect Cloud instance
4. In the CData Connect Cloud Connector in Looker Studio select a Connection (e.g. FHIR1) and click Next
5. Select a Table (e.g. Patient) or use a Custom Query and click Connect to continue
6. If needed, modify columns, click Create Report, and add the data source to the report.
7. Select a visualization style and add it to the report.
8. Select Dimensions and Measures to customize your visualization.

Live Access to FHIR Data from Cloud Applications

Now you have a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to live FHIR data from your Looker Studio workbook. You can create more data sources and new visualizations, build reports, and more — all without replicating FHIR data.

Try CData Connect Cloud and get real-time data access to 100+ SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications.