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FHIR Implementation Patterns

A comprehensive guide to distributed FHIR patterns for interoperability, privacy, and imaging

Welcome to the FHIR Implementation Patterns documentation - a comprehensive guide to distributed FHIR design patterns for interoperability, privacy, and imaging.

Target Audience

  • FHIR Implementation Engineers - building healthcare interoperability solutions
  • Healthcare IT Architects - designing system integrations and data exchange platforms
  • Standards Developers - working on FHIR-based specifications and implementation guides
  • Healthcare Software Vendors - implementing FHIR capabilities in clinical systems
  • Research Informaticians - building data pipelines and analytics platforms for population health

Common Challenges

  • Complex authentication flows: Managing user-facing apps, backend services, and federated identity across organizations
  • Privacy and consent complexity: Implementing granular data sharing that varies by purpose, time, patient preferences, and recipient organization
  • Multi-modal integration: Bridging clinical data (FHIR) with medical imaging (DICOM), documents, and legacy formats
  • Regulatory compliance: Ensuring end-to-end audit trails and provenance tracking for healthcare regulations
  • Legacy system modernization: Gradually updating systems while preserving clinical semantics and existing workflows
  • Population-scale data processing: Efficiently extracting and transforming large datasets for research, quality metrics, and public health

Getting Started Patterns

We recommend starting with these foundational patterns:

Pattern Categories

Core Patterns

Core patterns form the foundation of any FHIR interoperability system. These patterns focus on fundamental routing, security, and privacy concerns that are essential for healthcare data exchange.

Explore Core Patterns

Pipeline Patterns

Pipeline patterns focus on data processing and transformation workflows that handle the movement, transformation, and governance of healthcare data.

Explore Pipeline Patterns

Imaging Patterns

Imaging patterns focus on medical imaging integration and visualization within FHIR-based healthcare systems.

Explore Imaging Patterns

Integration Patterns

Integration patterns focus on legacy modernization and capability management, enabling gradual transition from legacy systems to modern FHIR-based architectures.

Explore Integration Patterns

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