Question: Whats a conformant #FHIR Server?

Mar 25, 2014

Question

Where are a concise set of requirements for a FHIR server? In other words, implementing RESTful API implies an architectural pattern for interactions, but where are the requirements for a FHIR server? How can we say we are a conformant FHIR server?

Answer

A conformant FHIR server is one that implements the API documented at http://hl7.org/implement/standards/fhir/http.html.

The API is a set of operations performed on a system, a resource type, or a resource. The minimum that a server must do is respond with a conformance statement when it is asked to. The conformance statement can say that the server doesn’t support any operations for any resource. This would be a conformant server, though not a very useful one (this might make sense if it’s doing per-user conformance statement, and the user has no access).

From this point - an empty server, the server can list any resource types it supports, and specify operations from the API as it chooses. A useful server will implement at least read and search for the resource types it supports; implementing any other operations is very much use-case dependent. A conformant server will implement all the operations it lists in the conformance statement, and it will list all the operations it performs in the conformance statement.