Glossary
FHIR Backend Glossary
A working glossary of the FHIR backend concepts that show up in product, engineering, security, and clinical-informatics conversations. Each term has a one-line definition for skimming and a dedicated page for context, common pitfalls, and how Fire Arrow handles it.
If you only read three
Start with FHIR backend: it sets the scope of what a healthcare application backend has to cover beyond pure FHIR storage. Then read FHIR RBAC: the authorisation model that healthcare actually needs (compartments, organisations, care teams, identity-conditional rules) instead of a generic role table. Finally, read FHIR Subscription: the workflow primitive that connects the backend to whatever the application does next, from patient reminders to clinical alerts to downstream analytics.
Foundations
- FHIR backend
- A FHIR backend is a server that uses FHIR resources as the application data model and exposes them through FHIR APIs (REST, GraphQL) along with the application services around them: authentication, authorization, scheduling, notifications, and admin tooling.
- FHIR server
- A FHIR server is an HTTP service that implements the FHIR REST API: read, search, create, update, delete, history, and the standard operations defined by HL7 FHIR.
- FHIR resource
- A FHIR resource is a typed clinical data object (Patient, Observation, CarePlan, MedicationRequest, QuestionnaireResponse, Task, and others) defined by the HL7 FHIR specification.
- HAPI FHIR
- HAPI FHIR is an open-source Java framework for FHIR. It includes a JPA-based server implementation widely used as a foundation for production FHIR backends.
API surfaces
- FHIR GraphQL
- FHIR GraphQL is a GraphQL query interface over FHIR resources. Clients request the fields and related resources they need in one query, instead of multiple FHIR REST round trips.
- SMART on FHIR
- SMART on FHIR is a profile that defines OAuth 2.0 launch flows and scope strings for applications that consume FHIR data, typically launched from an EHR.
Authorisation and privacy
- FHIR RBAC
- FHIR RBAC is role-based access control applied to FHIR resources, operations, and the relationships between them, rather than to abstract resource types alone.
- FHIR compartment
- A FHIR compartment is a logical grouping of resources related to a compartment owner (typically a Patient, Practitioner, RelatedPerson, Device, or Encounter). It is defined in the FHIR specification per resource type.
- FHIR de-identification
- FHIR de-identification is the practice of removing or transforming identifying fields from FHIR resources so that the resulting data can be used for purposes that should not have access to direct patient identifiers.
Workflow primitives
- CarePlan in FHIR
- A CarePlan is a FHIR resource that describes intended care for a patient: activities, goals, care team, status, and timeline.
- Task in FHIR
- A Task is a FHIR resource that represents a discrete unit of work: who should do it, what it is for, what its current status is, and when it is due or was completed.
- QuestionnaireResponse
- A QuestionnaireResponse is a FHIR resource that holds the answers a patient or clinician submitted to a Questionnaire, with structured items linked back to the Questionnaire definition.
- FHIR Subscription
- A FHIR Subscription is a resource that tells a FHIR server to deliver a notification when resources matching a search expression are created or updated.
