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What is FHIR?

Overview

Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) is a standard for exchanging healthcare information electronically. Developed by Health Level Seven International (HL7), FHIR aims to simplify the implementation of healthcare data exchanges, ensuring data is accessible, consistent, and secure across various healthcare systems.

Purpose

The primary objectives of FHIR are to:

  • Improve Interoperability: Facilitate seamless data exchange between different healthcare systems.
  • Enhance Data Accessibility: Make healthcare data easily accessible and usable by healthcare providers, patients, and applications.
  • Support Modern Web Technologies: Leverage web standards such as RESTful APIs and JSON to ensure compatibility with modern web technologies.

Key Components

Resources

FHIR structures healthcare data into modular components called resources. Each resource represents a specific concept in healthcare and can be easily combined or extended. Examples of FHIR resources include:

  • Patient: Information about the patient, including demographics and identifiers.
  • Observation: Data about clinical measurements and results, such as vital signs and lab results.
  • Medication: Details about medications prescribed or administered to the patient.
  • AllergyIntolerance: Information about patient allergies and intolerances.
  • Condition: Records of diagnoses, conditions, and clinical problems.
  • Procedure: Information about medical procedures performed on the patient.
  • Encounter: Details about patient visits and interactions with healthcare providers.
  • CarePlan: Information about planned interventions and goals for patient care.
  • DiagnosticReport: Results of diagnostic tests and screenings.
  • Practitioner: Information about healthcare professionals involved in patient care.

Data Types

FHIR uses a set of defined data types for consistency across resources. These include:

  • Primitive types (string, integer, boolean, etc.)
  • Complex types (CodeableConcept, Reference, Period, etc.)

Extensions

Extensions allow for adding new data elements to resources without changing the core definition, providing flexibility while maintaining interoperability.

Profiling

Profiling allows for customizing FHIR resources for specific use cases while staying compliant with the base standard.

FHIR R4 vs Previous Versions

R4 introduced several improvements:

  • Normative content: Many resources are now normative, ensuring long-term stability.
  • Improved consistency across resources.
  • Enhanced support for clinical decision support and quality measures.

FHIR R4 Data Format

FHIR R4 data is most commonly represented in JSON format.

Example of a Patient resource in JSON format:

{
  "resourceType": "Patient",
  "id": "example",
  "name": [
    {
      "use": "official",
      "family": "Doe",
      "given": ["John"]
    }
  ],
  "gender": "male",
  "birthDate": "1970-01-01"
}