FHIR
FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) is a standard for exchanging healthcare information electronically. It is a modern and open standards framework developed by Health Level Seven International (HL7) for the exchange, integration, sharing, and retrieval of electronic healthcare data. FHIR is designed to be easy to implement, flexible, and scalable, making it ideal for use in various healthcare systems, applications, and devices.
FHIR leverages widely used web technologies such as RESTful web services and JSON or XML data formats, making it developer-friendly and compatible with modern web-based systems. It provides a set of resources, which are standardized representations of discrete clinical and administrative concepts such as patients, medications, observations, encounters, and more. These resources can be combined and queried to construct complex healthcare workflows and applications.
FHIR aims to improve interoperability between different healthcare systems, entities, and stakeholders, enabling the seamless exchange of healthcare information across different organizations, technologies, and platforms. It supports the integration and sharing of data among healthcare providers, payers, researchers, patients, and other healthcare stakeholders to facilitate coordinated care, clinical decision support, population health management, and other healthcare use cases.
Identifiers
In FHIR, identifiers are used to uniquely identify various resources such as
patients, practitioners, organizations, medications, and many others. An
identifier in FHIR consists of two main components: the system and the value.
These identifiers are often written system|value, e.g.
urn:oid:2.16.578.1.12.4.1.4.1|ddmmyyxxxxx for a Norwegian national identity
number.
- The system component of an identifier represents the namespace or the identifier system under which the value is defined. It provides context to the identifier value and ensures that the identifier is globally unique within the specified system. The system can be a URL or an OID (Object Identifier) that identifies the organization or authority responsible for assigning and managing the identifier values.
- The value component of an identifier is the actual unique identifier value within the defined system. It can be a string or a numeric value that uniquely identifies the resource within the specified system
Identifiers in our FHIR APIs
| Object identifier (OID) | Description | |
|---|---|---|
| Patient, NPR ID | http://dips.no/fhir/namingsystem/dips-patientid | Indicates a patient identifier by the internal patient record ID. |
| Patient, National ID | urn:oid:2.16.578.1.12.4.1.4.1 | Norwegian national identity number ("Fødselsnummer"). |
| Patient, National ID for foreigners | urn:oid:2.16.578.1.12.4.1.4.2 | Temporary Norwegian identity number assigned to foreigners living in Norway ("D-nummer"). |
| Patient, temporarily assigned ID | urn:oid:2.16.578.1.12.4.1.4.3 | Temporary identity number ("Hjelpenummer"), commonly used when the patient doesn't have a national identity number or D-number. |
| Performer (author/authenticator), HPR-number | urn:oid:2.16.578.1.12.4.1.4.4 | Official and unique number assigned to healthcare personnel ("HPR-nummer"). |
| Performer (author/authenticator), HCP-ID | urn:oid:1.3.6.1.4.1.9038.51.1 | DIPS performer ID ("HelsetjenesterolleID"). |
| Performer (organization), RESH-ID | urn:oid:2.16.578.1.12.4.1.4.102 | RESH-ID for Department. |
| Performer (organization), Department ID | http://dips.no/fhir/namingsystem/dips-organizationid | DIPS Department ID. |
| Encounter, DIPS Episode of care | http://dips.no/fhir/namingsystem/dips-omsorgsepisodeid | DIPS internal ID for an episode of care (Omsorgsepisode). |
| Encounter, DIPS Planned Contact | urn:oid:1.3.6.1.4.1.9038.41 | DIPS internal ID for a planned contact (Planlagt kontakt). |