FHIR Pseudonymization Proxy

FHIR Pseudonymization Proxy is an IRIS for Health application which acts as a REST API proxy to a FHIR server. It realizes on-the-fly pseudonymization of incoming GET requests and outgoing responses (FHIR resources) and can be used to transparently retrieve pseudonymized data from a FHIR server which holds sensitive data.

The pseudonymization is fully customizable via DTLs.

Installation

Clone repo, build and run the docker image from a terminal window:

git clone https://github.com/MW-de/fhir-pseudonymization-proxy.git
cd fhir-pseudonymization-proxy
./docker-build.sh
docker-compose up -d

Usage

The FHIR proxy endpoint is http://localhost:9092/fhirproxy/r4. It can be used for GET requests like a regular FHIR server.
(Optional) Production settings can be adjusted in the Management Portal in http://localhost:9092/csp/sys/UtilHome.csp (Login with _system:SYS) in namespace FHIRPROXY, e. g. to define a different target FHIR server (other than the built-in at /fhirrepo/r4).

Example FHIR REST requests

Base URL = http://localhost:9092/fhirproxy/r4.

// Querying the FHIR proxy returns a Bundle of Patients with on-the-fly pseudonymized IDs and data
GET http://localhost:9092/fhirproxy/r4/Patient

// Compare with the original data by querying the target FHIR server directly
GET http://localhost:9092/fhirrepo/r4/Patient

After initial retrieval via FHIR query, the pseudonyms can be used for subsequent queries:

// search a Patient resource by its pseudonymized ID
GET /Patient?_id=PSN-245edc18f4ce

// get all data from a single Patient with $everything pseudonymized
GET /Patient/PSN-245edc18f4ce/$everything

// query a Patient by a pseudonymized identifier (MRN)
GET /Patient?identifier=http://hospital.smarthealthit.org|PSN-f735471e8ff9

// query a Condition for a subject by a pseudonymized reference
GET /Condition?subject=Patient/PSN-245edc18f4ce

The proxy translates the pseudonyms into the real value before querying the target FHIR server, completely transparent to the client.

Architecture

The FHIR proxy is built as a modular interoperability production which includes the components:

FHIRInteroperabilityAdapter to expose a FHIR REST API
RequestProcessor, the main business process which handles the requests
RequestPreprocessor
ResponsePayloadProcessor
PseudonymizationOperation
a set of DTLs, FHIRPROXYPKG.DTL.FHIR.* which perform the actual pseudonymization

Production overview:

Requests are intercepted through the RequestPreprocessor and then forwarded to the target FHIR server. The reponse is intercepted through the ResponsePayloadProcessor and the transmitted back to the client:

The pseudonymization is realized through a set of DTLs which define the rules according to which the data shall be pseudonymized:

The PseudonymizationOperation is invoked from within the DTLs and translates values into pseudonyms:

Pseudonymization

Response pseudonymzation

ID pseudonymization

ID pseudonymization includes resource IDs and identifiers:

FHIR resource IDs
- [Resource].id
FHIR references
- [Resource].subject
- (…)
identifiers
- [Resource].identifier

In this example application, ID pseudonymization is implemented in the PseudonymizationOperation via hashing. PseudonymizationOperation persists all created pseudonyms in the global ^PseudonymD for reverse lookup of hashed values.

Note: In real-world applications, ID pseudonymization will likely be carried out by a more sophisticated method, or an external system which the PseudonymizationOperation will dispatch the pseudonymization requests to.

Data pseudonymization

Data pseudonymization may be adjusted according to the requirements of the application by customizing the DTLs. The following elements are implemented as a starting point:

Patient.name: replaced by “PSEUDONYMIZED”
Patient.birthDate: set to the 15th of the month
Patient.address: removed except for the first 3 digits of the postal code
Patient.telecom, Patient.contact, Patient.photo, Patient.generalPractitioner: removed
Pracitioner.name: replaced by “PSEUDONYMIZED”
(more, see DTLs for details)

Note: Data contained in extensions is currently not pseudonymized.

Request pseudonymzation

ids and identifiers which are part of the request, e. g. in GET /Patient?identifier=[MRN], need to be converted to their correct pseudonyms before dispatching the request to the target FHIR server to

a) provide consistent FHIR retrieval and search capabilities and
b) avoid leakage of real identifier <> pseudonym pairs, i. e. GET /Patient/[RealID] shall not return the data for GET /Patient/[PSN].

Currently, these query formats are implemented:

GET /[Resource]/[id] -> GET /[Resource]/[PSN]
GET /[Resource]?_id=[id] -> GET /[Resource]?_id=[PSN]
GET /[...]?subject=[Resource]/[id] -> GET /[...]?subject=[Resource]/[PSN]
GET /[Resource]?identifier=system|[value] -> GET /[Resource]?identifier=system|[PSN]
translation of Bundle.link URLs to proxied URLs

Note: Implementing the entire FHIR search capabilities is more complex and not yet part of this proof-of-concept.

Change log

v0.1.0

Initial release in a working proof-of-concept state

Acknowledgement

This project uses parts from iris-fhir-template by Evgeny Shvarov.