BACKGROUND Informatics tools to support the integration and subsequent interrogation of spatiotemporal data such as clinical data and environmental exposures data are lacking. Such tools are needed to support research in environmental health and any biomedical field that is challenged by the need for integrated spatiotemporal data to examine individual-level determinants of health and disease. RESULTS We have developed an open-source software application-FHIR PIT (Health Level 7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources Patient data Integration Tool)-to enable studies on the impact of individual-level environmental exposures on health and disease. FHIR PIT was motivated by the need to integrate patient data derived from our institution's clinical warehouse with a variety of public data sources on environmental exposures and then openly expose the data via ICEES (Integrated Clinical and Environmental Exposures Service). FHIR PIT consists of transformation steps or building blocks that can be chained together to form a transformation and integration workflow. Several transformation steps are generic and thus can be reused. As such, new types of data can be incorporated into the modular FHIR PIT pipeline by simply reusing generic steps or adding new ones. We validated FHIR PIT in the context of a driving use case designed to investigate the impact of airborne pollutant exposures on asthma. Specifically, we replicated published findings demonstrating racial disparities in the impact of airborne pollutants on asthma exacerbations. CONCLUSIONS While FHIR PIT was developed to support our driving use case on asthma, the software can be used to integrate any type and number of spatiotemporal data sources at a level of granularity that enables individual-level study. We expect FHIR PIT to facilitate research in environmental health and numerous other biomedical disciplines.

中文翻译：

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FHIR PIT：用于临床数据和环境暴露数据时空整合的开放软件应用程序。

背景技术缺乏支持时空数据例如临床数据和环境暴露数据的整合和随后询问的信息学工具。需要这些工具来支持环境健康和任何生物医学领域的研究，这些领域受到综合时空数据的挑战，以检查个人层面的健康和疾病决定因素。结果 我们开发了一个开源软件应用程序——FHIR PIT（健康级别 7 快速医疗互操作性资源患者数据集成工具）——以研究个体水平环境暴露对健康和疾病的影响。FHIR PIT 的动机是需要整合来自我们机构的患者数据” s 临床仓库，其中包含有关环境暴露的各种公共数据源，然后通过 ICEES（临床和环境暴露综合服务）公开公开数据。FHIR PIT 由转换步骤或构建块组成，它们可以链接在一起以形成转换和集成工作流。几个转换步骤是通用的，因此可以重复使用。因此，通过简单地重用通用步骤或添加新的步骤，可以将新类型的数据合并到模块化 FHIR PIT 管道中。我们在旨在调查空气污染物暴露对哮喘影响的驾驶用例的背景下验证了 FHIR PIT。具体来说，我们复制了已发表的研究结果，证明空气污染物对哮喘恶化的影响存在种族差异。结论 虽然 FHIR PIT 的开发是为了支持我们在哮喘方面的驾驶用例，但该软件可用于以支持个人级别研究的粒度级别集成任何类型和数量的时空数据源。我们希望 FHIR PIT 能够促进环境健康和许多其他生物医学学科的研究。