Technical Glossary
FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources)
Exact Definition
FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) is a standard for healthcare data exchange developed by HL7 International, defining a set of REST APIs and JSON/XML data formats for electronic health records (EHR) interoperability.
Architectural Deep Dive
Before FHIR, healthcare systems used proprietary data formats (HL7 v2, DICOM) that required expensive middleware to translate between hospital systems. FHIR v4 defines standardized resource types (Patient, Observation, Medication, Encounter) accessible via simple REST APIs. US federal law (21st Century Cures Act) mandates FHIR v4 API support for all EHR systems, making FHIR proficiency essential for any healthcare software vendor.
The ERPStack Approach
We build FHIR v4-compliant patient data layers for healthcare portals, implementing resource endpoints for Patient, Observation, and Medication resources with AES-256 encryption on all ePHI fields.