Create a healthcare search app

Caution:

Restrictions for healthcare: As a customer, you will not, and will not allow End Users to, use the Generative AI Services for clinical purposes (for clarity, non-clinical research, scheduling, or other administrative tasks is not restricted), as a substitute for professional medical advice, or in any manner that is overseen by or requires clearance or approval from any applicable regulatory authority. For more information, see Service Specific Terms.
For clarity, with respect to the use of Vertex AI Search to retrieve and summarize existing medical information, the restriction on the use for clinical purposes means the restriction on the use for direct diagnosis or treatment purposes without review by a licensed professional in compliance with applicable laws and regulations.
The generated output may not always be completely reliable. Due to the nature of LLMs and Generative AI, outputs may have incorrect or biased (for example, stereotypes or other harmful content) information and should be reviewed. All summaries or answers should be considered draft and not final.
This product's intended usage is not to provide information pertaining to the prevention, diagnosis or treatment of illness or disease. Questions regarding diagnosis or treatment recommendations are not intended to be addressed by the product. This product's intended use is to retrieve and summarize existing medical information provided by users.
Due to limited test data, this product may or may not be applicable to age group 0-18 and to age group 85 and above. Therefore, when reviewing the generated output, customers must consider the representativeness of subpopulations within their source data.

To search clinical data in Vertex AI Search, you can follow one of these workflows:

Create a healthcare data store, import FHIR R4 data into the data store, connect it to a healthcare search app, and query the clinical data. For more information, see Create a healthcare data store.
Create a healthcare search app, create a healthcare data store and import FHIR R4 data into the data store during the app creation process, and query the clinical data.

This page describes the second method.

About data import frequency

You can import FHIR R4 data into a data store in the following ways:

Batch import: a one-time import. Data is imported into a data store. For further incremental imports, see Refresh healthcare data.
Streaming import (Preview): a near real-time streaming data import. Any incremental changes in the source FHIR store are synchronized in the Vertex AI Search data store. Streaming requires a data connector, which is a type of a data store that contains an entity. An entity is also a data store instance.

The data streaming rate for a given Google Cloud project is dependent on the following quotas. If you exceed the quota you might experience streaming delays.
- The number of pending FHIR or BigQuery streaming writes per minute. For more information, see Quotas and limits.
- The number of FHIR read operations per minute per region. For more information, see Cloud Healthcare API FHIR quotas.

You can select the data import frequency at the time of data store creation and you cannot change this configuration later.

Streaming import is available for all the resources that Vertex AI Search supports. For more information, see Healthcare FHIR R4 data schema reference.

Before you begin

Before you create the healthcare search app, complete these requirements:

Understand the relationship between apps and data stores for healthcare search. For more information, see About apps and data stores.
Prepare your FHIR data for ingestion.
Vertex AI Search for healthcare provides search services only in the US multi-region (us). Therefore, your healthcare search app and data stores must reside in the us multi-region.

Create an app

You can create a healthcare search app either in the Google Cloud console or using the API. The two approaches differ in the following way:

In the Google Cloud console: Select the source FHIR store in the Cloud Healthcare API and import FHIR data as part of the healthcare search app creation process. To stream FHIR data (Preview), your source FHIR store must be in the same Google Cloud project as the destination Vertex AI Search app.
Through the REST API: You can import FHIR data from a Cloud Healthcare API FHIR store. The FHIR store can be in the same Google Cloud project or a different one.
1. Use the dataStores.create method to create a healthcare data store.
2. Use the documents.import method to specify the FHIR store in Cloud Healthcare API and import FHIR data.
3. Use the engines.create method to create the healthcare search app and specify an existing healthcare data store.

To create a healthcare search app, follow these steps:

Permissions required for this task

Grant the following permissions or the following Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles to the service-PROJECT_NUMBER@gcp-sa-discoveryengine.iam.gserviceaccount.com service account.

For one-time import of FHIR data from FHIR stores in Cloud Healthcare API.
Permissions
- bigquery.jobs.create
- bigquery.datasets.create
- bigquery.tables.export
- healthcare.datasets.get
- healthcare.datasets.list
- healthcare.fhirStores.get
- healthcare.fhirStores.list
- healthcare.fhirStores.export
Roles
For streaming import of FHIR data from FHIR stores in Cloud Healthcare API (Preview).
Permissions
- healthcare.datasets.get
- healthcare.datasets.list
- healthcare.fhirStores.get
- healthcare.fhirStores.update
- healthcare.fhirStores.list
- healthcare.fhirStores.export
- healthcare.fhirResources.get
Roles
- Healthcare FHIR Store Administrator (roles/healthcare.fhirStoreAdmin)
- Healthcare FHIR Resource Reader (roles/healthcare.fhirResourceReader)
To customize the schema when creating a data store (Preview) to configure the indexability, searchability, and retrievability of FHIR resources and elements.
Permissions
- storage.objects.create
- storage.objects.delete
- storage.objects.list
Roles
- Storage Object Admin (roles/storage.objectAdmin)
To import FHIR data that references files in Google Cloud. These are granted by default if the referenced files are in the same Google Cloud project as the Vertex AI Search app.
Permissions
- storage.objects.get
- storage.buckets.create
Roles
- Storage Object Viewer (roles/storage.objectViewer)
- Storage Admin (roles/storage.admin)

Console

In the Google Cloud console, go to the Agent Builder page.

Agent Builder
On the Apps page, click New app.
On the Create app page, select Search.
In the Search app configuration pane, select Healthcare.
To turn on advanced LLM features for this app, click the Advanced LLM features toggle.

Activate advanced LLM features to get search summaries, which are short summarizations of the top one or more search results.

When you activate LLM features, it can take up to five minutes for the supported features to become available.
In the Your app name field, enter a name for your app.
In the External name of your company or organization field, enter the common name for your company or organization. You don't need to include suffixes such as Inc or LLC. This field is useful for the LLM to identify the company that the app represents.
Click Continue.
To connect to a data store, on the Data Stores page, do one of the following:
- Select an existing healthcare data store for batch import or an existing data connector for streaming import. To create a data store or a data connector before creating an app, see Create a healthcare data store.
- Create a data store (for one-time batch import) or a data connector, which is an instance of a data store (for streaming import):
  1. Click Create data store.
  2. In the Select a data source pane, select Healthcare API (FHIR) as your data source.
  3. To import data from your FHIR store, do one of the following:
    - Select the FHIR store from the list of available FHIR stores:
      1. Expand the FHIR store field.
      2. In this list, select a dataset that resides in a permitted location and then select a FHIR store that uses FHIR version R4.
        To stream FHIR data (Preview), your source FHIR store must be in the same Google Cloud project as the destination Vertex AI Search data store.
    - Enter the FHIR store manually:
      1. Expand the FHIR store field.
      2. Click Enter FHIR store manually.
      3. In the FHIR store name dialog, enter the full name of the FHIR store in the following format:
        project/PROJECT_ID/locations/LOCATION/datasets/DATASET_ID/fhirStores/FHIR_STORE_ID
      4. Click Save.
  4. In the Synchronization section, select one of the following options. This selection cannot be changed after the data store is created.
    - One time: to perform a one-time batch data import. For further incremental imports, see Refresh healthcare data.
    - Streaming: to perform a near real-time streaming data import. To stream data, you must create a data connector, which is a type of a data store. This is a Preview feature. To set up a streaming data store using the REST API, contact your customer engineer.
  5. In the What is the schema for this data? section, select one of these options:
    - Google predefined schema: to retain the Google-defined schema configurations, such as indexability, searchability, and retrievability, for the supported FHIR resources and elements. Once you select this option, you cannot update the schema after you create the data store. If you want to be able to change the schema after the data store creation, select the Custom schema (Preview) option.
      1. Click Continue.
      2. In the Your data store name field, enter a name for your data store.
      3. Click Create.
    - Custom schema (Preview): to define your own schema configurations, such as indexability, searchability, and retrievability, for the supported FHIR resources and elements. This is a Preview feature. To set up a configurable schema, contact your customer engineer.
      1. Click Continue.
      2. Review the schema, expand each field, and edit the field settings.
      3. Click Add new fields to add new fields on the supported FHIR resources. You cannot remove the fields provided in the Google-defined schema.
      4. Click Continue.
      5. In the Your data connector name field, enter a name for your data connector.
      6. Click Create.
  6. Click Continue.
  7. Select the created data store or data connector.
Optional: To see a list of unavailable data stores, click Learn why.

A table is displayed with a list of data stores and the reason why they are unavailable. Here are some of the reasons why a data store might be unavailable:
- Your data store type allows connection to only one app and the data store is already connected.
- Your data store and your app are of different types. For example, you you cannot connect a website search data store to a healthcare search app.
Click Create.

If the app and its data store are created successfully, the data store details page displays the details of the imported FHIR data.

REST

Create a healthcare data store and import healthcare data into it.
Create a healthcare search app and connect it to a data store. A healthcare search app can only connect to one data store, whereas a given data store can be connected to several apps.

Key Term: In Vertex AI Search, the term app can be used interchangeably with the term engine in the context of APIs.
```
curl -X POST\
 -H "Authorization: Bearer $(gcloud auth print-access-token)" \
 -H "Content-Type: application/json"\
 -H "X-Goog-User-Project: PROJECT_ID" \
"https://us-discoveryengine.googleapis.com/v1alpha/projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/us/collections/default_collection/engines?engineId=APP_ID" \
 -d '{
    "displayName": "APP_DISPLAY_NAME",
    "dataStoreIds":"DATA_STORE_ID",
    "industryVertical": "HEALTHCARE_FHIR",
    "solutionType": "SOLUTION_TYPE_SEARCH",
    "searchEngineConfig": {
      "searchTier": "SEARCH_TIER_STANDARD",
      "searchAddOns": ["SEARCH_ADD_ON"]
    }
}'
```
Replace the following:
- PROJECT_ID: the ID of your Google Cloud project.
- APP_ID: the ID of the Vertex AI Search app that you want to create.
- APP_DISPLAY_NAME: the display name of the Vertex AI Search app that you want to create.
- DATA_STORE_ID: the ID of an existing Vertex AI Search data store that you want to add to the Vertex AI Search app.
- SEARCH_ADD_ON: an optional field to specify whether you want the advanced LLM features, such as searching with generative AI answers, for this app. To activate advanced LLM features, enter the value SEARCH_ADD_ON_LLM. If you don't want Advanced LLM features, then either specify SEARCH_ADD_ON_UNSPECIFIED or remove the searchAddOns field. For more information, see Advanced LLM features.
Response

You should receive a JSON response similar to the following. If the value for the done field is true, it indicates that the operation to create the app was completed. If it is false, the app creation operation was unsuccessful.
```
{
  "name": "projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/us/collections/default_collection/operations/APP_CREATION_OPERATION_ID",
  "done": true,
  "response": {
    "@type": "type.googleapis.com/google.cloud.discoveryengine.v1alpha.Engine",
    "name": "projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/us/collections/default_collection/engines/APP_ID",
    "displayName": "APP_DISPLAY_NAME",
    "dataStoreIds": [
      "DATA_STORE_ID"
    ],
    "solutionType": "SOLUTION_TYPE_SEARCH",
    "searchEngineConfig": {
      "searchTier": "SEARCH_TIER_STANDARD",
      "searchAddOns": [
        "SEARCH_ADD_ON_LLM"
      ]
    },
    "industryVertical": "HEALTHCARE_FHIR"
  }
}
```

Verify app creation

This task shows you how to verify whether a healthcare search app was created successfully and whether FHIR data was imported into the data store successfully.

In the Google Cloud console: Select the app and verify its details.
Through the REST API, use the engines.get method to get the healthcare data store details.

To verify data store creation and data import, complete the following steps.

Console

In the Google Cloud console, go to the Agent Builder page.

Agent Builder
On the Apps page, verify whether the app that you created is in the apps list.
Verify that the data store that you connected to the app is listed in the Connected data stores column.
Select the data store and verify the data store details.

REST

Verify the app creation.

curl -X GET -H "Authorization: Bearer $(gcloud auth print-access-token)" \
 -H "Content-Type: application/json"\
 -H "X-Goog-User-Project: PROJECT_ID" \
 "https://us-discoveryengine.googleapis.com/v1alpha/projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/us/collections/default_collection/engines/APP_ID"

Replace the following:

PROJECT_ID: the ID of your Google Cloud project.
APP_ID: the ID of the Vertex AI Search app.

Response

You should receive a JSON response similar to the following. The response contains details of the created app.

{
  "name": "projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/us/collections/default_collection/engines/APP_ID",
  "displayName": "APP_DISPLAY_NAME",
  "createTime": "APP_CREATION_TIMESTAMP",
  "dataStoreIds": [
    "DATA_STORE_ID"
  ],
  "solutionType": "SOLUTION_TYPE_SEARCH",
  "searchEngineConfig": {
    "searchTier": "SEARCH_TIER_STANDARD",
    "searchAddOns": [
      "SEARCH_ADD_ON_LLM"
    ]
  },
  "industryVertical": "HEALTHCARE_FHIR",
  "dataStores": [
    "projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/us/collections/default_collection/dataStores/APP_ID"
  ]
}

Verify data store creation and FHIR data import.

What's next

Search for healthcare data in your healthcare search app.
Refresh healthcare data.