Connecting openEHR CDRs to Tableau data visualisation tools?

Tool Support REQUESTS
1

Hi!

Question
Is anybody aware of existing (or planned) integrations from an openEHR CDR to Tableau data visualisation tools?

Background

We have seen similar integrations from openEHR CDRs to the statistics tool/language “R” in the form of code that transform openEHR AQL query reponses to R-native data structures (There are also similar approaches for Python) See e.g. links in the thread Business Intelligence tools with openEHR support

Tableau links:

Example setting/use:

At Karolinska University Hospital we are using a lot of Tableau visualisations to keep track of what is happening at the hospital, including for example production and economic measurements. We also use Tableau list/table-based live visualisation screens for e.g. flagging (non)existence and results of risk assements for patients currently at each participating ward (this leads to increased patient safety and better working conditons for staff).

Usually integrations have been done from each source system to Tableau via our ETL and Data Warehouse platform.

Now we start moving/copying more data directly from source systems into an openEHR CDR, and for several (not all) future use cases it would be good/simplifying to connect some Tableau visualisations directly to CDR data without going via the ETL and Data Warehouse platforms. One assumption of ours is that for several use cases good AQL queries could help format data from a CDR into structures that Tablau could use more or less directly.

P.S.
Even though it may be tempting, please don’t start a discussion in this particular thread reagarding if it is clever to connect a live production CDR to ETL/statistics/epidemiological tasks. - We have solutions for the scaling, copying etc. The question above is focused on using e.g. existing openEHR REST APIs, including the /query-related ones, to integrate specifically to Tableau. General discussiosn of BI/ETL for openEHR is likely better to continue in threads like Business Intelligence tools with openEHR support

2

To clarify: are you asking if anybody used existing REST APIs to feed Tableau? As in implement Tableau reports using CDR REST APIs as the data source?

3

@Seref the REST API was an example (thus “e.g.”), but any kind of Tableau integration would be of interest.

4

I have no experience with Tableau. Still a bit interested in what capabilities it has , like what kind of connectors.

Do you have any links to specific connectors, API definitions, etc which it supports? Or perhaps this is what you wanted answers on in this thread :wink:

5

Tableau and most other BI-tools like PowerBI, Looker etc are typically SQL-focused in the sense that they work in a tabular data model. They are low-code tools to essentially generate SQL-queries and a corresponding visualization. Typically using GROUP BYs and aggregating functions to produce things like “sum of revenue over business area x” etc.

In the case of Tableau they support a lot of different type of databases, i.e mostly adaptions of authn, wire protocols etc: Supported Connectors - Tableau

The fundamental issue would be how to present a tabular structure to these tools. Normally this is done using SQL tables/schemas. I can’t really see how you could do this with the RM so the most likely type of integration would be using “materialized AQL-queries” (like a stored query) where the response object (columns/rows) would define the table. Something like the current JSON-file importer: JSON File - Tableau

In this case, the connector would be “just” the mechanics of connecting to the Query API endpoint to execute the query and then somehow tell Tableau what the rows and columns are.

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6

We have used the Better /query/csv variant but not the raw AQL. This flattens out the resultset structure and formats the results in a simple tabular format.

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38.6,°C
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