Tutorial 1: FHIR Fundamentals¶

Pages: 2

📖 Page 1: What is FHIR?¶

What is FHIR?¶

FHIR = Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources

Think of it as a common language for healthcare systems: - Hospital A and Hospital B can share patient data easily using standardised format that everyone understands - Standardized format everyone understands

The 5 Resources We Use¶

📋 Patient      → Patient demographics (name, age, contact)

👨‍⚕️ Practitioner → Doctor/provider info (name, specialty)

🏥 Organization → Hospital/department (name, address)

📅 Appointment  → Scheduled visits (patient + doctor + time)

📝 AuditEvent   → Activity logs (who did what, when)

Simple Example¶

Patient in FHIR:

{
  "resourceType": "Patient",
  "id": "123",
  "name": [{"family": "Doe", "given": ["John"]}],
  "gender": "male",
  "birthDate": "1990-05-15"
}

That's it! A patient in FHIR format.

📖 Page 2: How Our App Works¶

Architecture (7 Layers)¶

User (Browser)
     ↓
Controller (Receives requests)
     ↓
Service (Business logic)
     ↓
DTO (Simple objects)
     ↓
Mapper (DTO ↔ FHIR)
     ↓
FHIR Client (HAPI FHIR)
     ↓
FHIR Server (Stores data)

Complete Flow Example¶

Creating a patient:

User fills form: firstName: "John", lastName: "Doe"
Controller receives form data
Service calls Mapper
Mapper converts to FHIR Patient
FHIR Client sends to server
Server saves and returns ID
Success message shown to user

Why This Architecture?¶

✅ Separation of concerns - Each layer has one job
✅ Easy to test - Test each layer independently
✅ Maintainable - Change one part without breaking others
✅ Scalable - Add more resources easily

Key Technologies¶

Layer	Technology
View	Thymeleaf (HTML templates)
Controller	Spring MVC
Service	Spring Service
DTO	POJOs + Lombok
Mapper	Custom Java classes
FHIR Client	HAPI FHIR
Server	Public FHIR R4 server

✅ You Now Know¶

What is FHIR (healthcare data standard)
5 resources we will be using
How our app architecture works
Data flow from user to FHIR server

🚀 Next¶

You understand FHIR! Now let's build the project.

→ Tutorial 2: Project Setup

💡 Quick Tips¶

FHIR Versions

We use FHIR R4 (most popular, stable version)

Test Server

We use https://hapi.fhir.org/baseR4 (free, public server)

No Database

We don't manage a database - FHIR server handles storage!