Cardiovascular Disease Risk Assessment FHIR API
Estimate the risk of a person having a cardiovascular event, such as a heart attack, within the next five years.
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Brief description
Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora provides a Health Information Standards Organisation (HISO) based Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) Risk Assessment (CVDRA) service for New Zealand healthcare providers.
The CVDRA service, based on algorithms specific to the New Zealand population, helps show the risk of a person between ages 30 and 74 having a serious cardiovascular event in the next five years.
Accessible data
The CVDRA API is free to use and can be integrated with an appropriate practice management system (PMS) and / or a user interface (UI) for end-users.
The CVDRA API calculates the cardiovascular risk based on parameters which both specify the type of algorithm to use and the values for calculation.
The variables used to calculate cardiovascular risk include:
- age
- sex
- National Health Index (NHI) number
- ethnicity
- New Zealand Deprivation Index (NZDep) score
- height, weight, smoking status, diabetes, personal health history, family health history, and other clinical measures directly related to cardiovascular disease risk.
Once complete, the CVDRA API returns a five-year risk value, along with information based on this risk, for example heart-age and risk trajectories.
Who can use this API
The API is intended for integration with:
- PMS or third-party integrators
- consumer-facing services, such as the Heart Foundation’s online heart health check, My Heart Check.
It can then be used by primary health organisations (PHOs), general practitioners (GPs), nurses, health service providers and the public.
Use cases
The following are a few scenarios that the API might be used for.
- Assess the CVD risk of a patient.
- Discuss care planning and risk management with a patient.
- Enable patients to calculate and understand their CVD risk.
- Generate and print a report of your cardiovascular risk.
- Create an application for the public to estimate their risk of heart attack and stroke.
Onboarding and implementation
This FHIR API will be migrated to the Digital Services Hub in the future, but in the interim please continue with the current process. If you are a health or IT provider interested in using the CVDRA service, contact the Health New Zealand long-term conditions team at ltc@health.govt.nz.
API types
REST API
Technical
The CVDRA service is currently operated on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. API implementation details can be found on the Swagger UI website.