Convert HL7 RIM to SQL Table Structure

Question

Am I looking at this RIM thing wrong? Does anyone know where I can find the HL7 RIM model as a sql table structure? I've looked through all the files in http://www.hl7.org/implement/standards/rim.cfm and cannot find one that would easily lend itself. It seems like this should be easy?

Answer 1

There is no such thing and this is for purpose. By trying to convert RIM to the database you may end up significantly de-normalizing your initial structure. You may look at openEHR (and HL7 FHIR) instead.

(You may find "Unofficial Developer's Guide to HL7v3 Basics" helpful to understand the RIM. The book is available at - hl7basics.shamilpublishing.com)

Answer 2

RIM based content is typically encoded as XML documents. Rather than trying to shred it out into a normalized relational schema you may get better results by storing the whole XML document in a single database field and then query it using XQuery. All the major commercial relational databases have pretty good support for this now.

Answer 3

HL7 v3 RIM is the base model for all v3 standards, is not a persistence model. HL7 v3 is a family of standards, including messaging and clinical document specification for different domains.

Of course you can represent the HL7 RIM in a SQL schema, since a mapping can be done, but is not the purpose of the HL7.

If you need to create a clinical data repository, start with your requirements, design a schema, then map RIM into your schema, but don't use the RIM as your database schema.