learn FHIR:
Videos & Tutorials

1. Introduction

1.1. Why FHIR ?

There are many Electronic Health Record(EHR) software out there, which stores data in their own formats. So when a patient moves from one hospital to another, how can we see patient history data ? Simply put, a standard method is needed to communicate across software and exchange medical data seamlessly. That's where FHIR comes in, together with many other terminilogy standards like ICD, SNOMED, LOINC etc.

1.2. What is FHIR ?

1.3. History: What was there before FHIR ?

source: www.medicalbillersandcoders.com : The Evolution of Interoperability in Healthcare

1.4. Quick look at HL7 v2, v3 & FHIR

HL7 v2 is a format based on values seperated by delimiters and collection of values grouped into sections. Here is an example HL7 v2 message:

source: www.sciencedirect.com/

This shows both HL7 v2, v3 with FHIR. Since HL7 v2 has been the only widely used standard for some time (before FHIR was introduced), we see the term "HL7" being used to mean "HL7 v2". For eg, there are job opportunities mentioning "you need to know about HL7 and FHIR", where HL7 is actually an organization. What it means here is HL7 v2 in most cases.

source: lyniate.com : Versions of the HL7 Standard

This is a good article on summarizing all these standards.

How HL7 standards were improved over time with additional features:
http://sil-asia.org : Exploring HL7 Standards


Here is a sample HL7 v2, CDA and FHIR messages contianing the same data:

1.5. What is HL7 CDA ?

Clinical Document Architecture(CDA) is an XML based standard.

According to this article:

The HL7 Version 3 Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) is part of the HL7 V3 with a focus on the actual clinical documents. CDA is a document markup standard that specifies the structure and semantics of “clinical documents” for the purpose of exchange between healthcare providers and patients. It defines a clinical document as having the following six characteristics:
1) Persistence
2) Stewardship
3) Potential for authentication
4) Context
5) Wholeness and
6) Human readability

1.6. Current usage of HL7 standards

By the time this article was written (January 15, 2020), these are the current usage of HL7 technologies around the world.

In terms of usage, currently, HL7 CDA is still the leading data exchange standard in the world. It has already surpassed HL7 V2 during the early 2010’s. HL7 FHIR is the leading draft standard, and upon its adoption by countries and corporations, it is projected that FHIR will exceed CDA before 2020. This is accepted since HL7 FHIR has been very useful (most useful) for digital health implementers and developers, as they are the once who first accepted this technology. Rose Ann Zuniga says in her article

2. How FHIR helps solve problems ?

2.1. ePreop Cerner FHIR Enabled App (video embedding disabled)
2.2. Apple Is Going After The Healthcare Industry, Starting With Personal Health Data
2.3. InterSystems: iOS, FHIR and IRIS for Health : How they communicate

3. For Medical Professionals : Getting Started

Going through these videos will give you a good foundation before you start hearing about many technical words and feel confused. Having a good understading of these is a must to proceed and practically use the FHIR specification.

3.1. What is HTTP Protocol ?

3.2. What is an API ?

3.3. What is a REST API ?

3.4. What is XML ?

3.5. What is JSON ?

3.6. FHIR Basics: An Example

4. FHIR Resources

4.1. Quick Guide to FHIR Resources

9. Misc Topics

9.2. Public FHIR Servers

This huge list of content in Confluence has a comprehensive list of FHIR servers that are publicly available for testing. As of now, there are 30+ public servers, which you can start using.