Send log of mobile application

Hey,

we develop a mobile app, which sends data (especially measured values) to a FHIR server. In order to get the log messages of the app in case of malfunctions, we want to develop the functionality that the app can send its log to the FHIR server. However, we have not yet found a suitable resource in the FHIR specification for sending device related logs. The log (list of strings) contains information about the behaviour a Device resource. Do you have any suggestions on how we can best implement this in a FHIR compliant way?

Thanks a lot!

Have you looked at AuditEvent? What sort of information is in the strings?

Hey, thanks for your answer. We were not sure about AuditEvent, because our log does not contain a classic audit log. The log (= the strings) contain information about the technical process of the device communication. This helps our support to find error sources in case of a malfunction of a device.

Can you give specific examples of the type of information logged?

Technical information (interesting for a system administrator), such as

  • Successful pairing with a bluetooth scale
  • Connection to server aborted
  • Internal timer successfully started

Those sound like appropriate events for AuditEvent.

As Lloyd points out this is the kind of things that could be recorded and made accessible using the FHIR AuditEvent.

The specific examples you mention could be intercepted and formatted to fit into a FHIR AuditEvent. There are similar events that are profiled in the DICOM specification for use when DICOM devices have these general configuration events, system started, system shutdown, address assigned, connection failure, etc.

Specifically to recording when a connection fails, this is a good one for FHIR AuditEvent. As the healthcare layer will know that it attempted to connect, why it was trying to connect, and it can record any specifics about why it failed to connect.

This said, I would not generally recommend that events that are already recorded in a different log format be simply reformatted unless there is a specific use-case for that. Meaning, that the existing log format is likely to be just as usable even when it is not in the FHIR format. I am thinking of your examples of starting timers and bluetooth pairing. There might be a need for the specific FHIR AuditEvent structure, but not clear to me why these would need to be in FHIR format.