MedMorph Backend Service Client

Reference implementation of the MedMorph Backend Service Client

About MedMorph

The Making EHR Data More Available for Research and Public Health (MedMorph) project seeks to advance public health and patient-centered outcomes by using emerging health data and exchange standards, such as Health Level 7 (HL7) Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) and Clinical Quality Language (CQL), to develop and implement an interoperable solution that will enable access to clinical data. The MedMorph project fits within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) strategic imperative of transforming how data are collected, used, and shared through modern Information Technology (IT) capabilities to save lives and improve health. The MedMorph project is funded by the Health and Human Services (HHS) Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Trust Fund (PCORTF) and executed by the Center for Surveillance, Epidemiology, and Laboratory Services (CSELS) Public Health Informatics Office (PHIO) to advance research and public health goals.

https://build.fhir.org/ig/HL7/fhir-medmorph/index.html

Running the Client

The Backend Service Client is provided as a NodeJS Express app. NodeJS is required to to run the app.

git clone https://github.com/mcode/medmorph-backend
cd medmorph-backend
npm install
npm start

With default settings, the app will now be running at http://localhost:3000

The Backend Service Client can also be run using docker. Make sure you have docker installed and running, then build the image and run the client.

docker-compose up

The app will now be running at http://localhost:3000.

Configuration Requirements

Certain configuration properties can be set or changed. Some of these properties can be set as enviornment variables, the easiest way to do this is to set them in an environment file, .env. A sample file is provided in this repo as .env.dev (you will need to rename/copy this into the .env file for it to work). Other configuration properties can be changed via the UI. The config.js file sets the default for all the config variables changeable by the UI, but will not override values already persisted in the database. Variables in the config.js file can be changed without a restart, but changing an environment variable will only affect the app if it is restarted.

Environment Variables

ENV	Required	Description
PORT	No	The port number for the server. Defaults to 3000 if not provided.
DEBUG	No	Set to `medmorph-backend:*` to enable debug loggers for the app.
BASE_URL	Yes	The base url for this server.
AUTH_CERTS_URL	Yes	Endpoint hosting the public JWK Set of the Auth server
AUTH_TOKEN_URL	Yes	Endpoint for requesting an access token through the use of an OAuth 2.0 client credentials flow

# Port number for the server, defaults to 3000 if not provided
PORT=3001

# This server base url (required)
BASE_URL=http://localhost:3000

# Enabled debug loggers
# The app uses the debug library, see: https://github.com/visionmedia/debug
# "The DEBUG environment variable is then used to enable these based on space or comma-delimited names."
# Enable all express loggers with DEBUG=*
# Enable all loggers for just the app with DEBUG=medmorph-backend:*
DEBUG=medmorph-backend:*

Config Variables

CONFIG	Required	Description
DATA_TRUST_SERVICE	Yes	The base url for the data/trust service server.
ADMIN_TOKEN	No	The value of the admin token to bypass authorization. If unset no admin token can be used.
REQUIRE_AUTH	No	If false, an access token will not be required to make requests. Defaults to true if unset.
REQUIRE_AUTH_FOR_OUTGOING	No	If false, the backend app will not acquire an access token before sending requests to other servers. Defaults to true if unset.

Check the config.js file to find the default value for each property or set new default values.

Server Requirements

The app expects at the minimum a single EHR server. There should also be at least one KA server and one PHA server for anything meaningful to happen. More details and examples can be found on the Collections Wiki

License

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.