Serverless on FHIR: Deploying machine learning models for healthcare on the cloud

Abstract: Machine Learning (ML) plays a vital role in implementing digital health. The advances in hardware and the democratization of software tools have revolutionized machine learning. However, the deployment of ML models -- the mathematical representation of the task to be performed -- for effective and efficient clinical decision support at the point of care is still a challenge. ML models undergo constant improvement of their accuracy and predictive power with a high turnover rate. Updating models consumed by downstream health information systems is essential for patient safety. We introduce a functional taxonomy and a four-tier architecture for cloud-based model deployment for digital health. The four tiers are containerized microservices for maintainability, serverless architecture for scalability, function as a service for portability and FHIR schema for discoverability. We call this architecture Serverless on FHIR and propose this as a standard to deploy digital health applications that can be consumed by downstream systems such as EMRs and visualization tools.