Inserting multiple observation values in single resource - FHIR - hl7-fhir

Question

I have hourly information for the patients heart rate like this
PID Hour HR
1 1 97
1 2 89
1 3 90
1 4 100
.....
.....
1 100 93
for each hour data i created json like this
# For Hour 1
{
"resourceType": "Observation",
"id": "heart-rate",
"meta": {
"profile": [
"http://hl7.org/fhir/StructureDefinition/vitalsigns"
]
},
"status": "final",
"category": [
{
"coding": [
{
"system": "http://terminology.hl7.org/CodeSystem/observation-category",
"code": "vital-signs",
"display": "Vital Signs"
}
],
"text": "Vital Signs"
}
],
"code": {
"coding": [
{
"system": "http://loinc.org",
"code": "8867-4",
"display": "Heart rate"
}
],
"text": "Heart rate"
},
"subject": {
"reference": "Patient/example"
},
"effectiveDateTime": "2020-04-21T00:00:00+05:30",
"valueQuantity": {
"value": 97,
"unit": "beats/minute",
"system": "http://unitsofmeasure.org",
"code": "/min"
}
}
# Hour 2
{
"resourceType": "Observation",
"id": "heart-rate",
"meta": {
"profile": [
"http://hl7.org/fhir/StructureDefinition/vitalsigns"
]
},
"status": "final",
"category": [
{
"coding": [
{
"system": "http://terminology.hl7.org/CodeSystem/observation-category",
"code": "vital-signs",
"display": "Vital Signs"
}
],
"text": "Vital Signs"
}
],
"code": {
"coding": [
{
"system": "http://loinc.org",
"code": "8867-4",
"display": "Heart rate"
}
],
"text": "Heart rate"
},
"subject": {
"reference": "Patient/example"
},
"effectiveDateTime": "2020-04-21T01:00:00+05:30",
"valueQuantity": {
"value": 89,
"unit": "beats/minute",
"system": "http://unitsofmeasure.org",
"code": "/min"
}
}
I created a resource bundle with 100 jsons nested inside entry and i am able to push it inside fhir-server.
{"resourceType": "Bundle", "type": "batch", "entry": [
The example given above is for one patient and one observation resource (heart-rate). I have more than 20000 patients with 50 different observation resource types.
Instead of creating 100 different json entries , is there any way to have one json representing 100 values. in value quantity if there is any way to have array of values mapped with timestamp. It would save lot of time.

Answer 1

For a single observation type and a single subject, if the observations are being made on a regular periodic basis, you can use the SampledData data type as the Observation.value. Typically that's for things like EKGs, fetal heart rate monitors, etc. which are sampling on a frequent basis, but nothing stops you from having a sampling period of an hour. However, if you don't have regular sampling, you must capture each as a distinct Observation. The reason is that we need to be able to extract the data however the user chooses to query it. The data needs to come in with the same sort of fine-grained organization that it might later need to go out. You might look at the Bulk Data API which uses LD-JSON to allow more efficient processing of large volumes of data.