Glossary
What is CDS Hooks?
CDS Hooks is a HL7 specification for triggering external clinical decision support during specific points in clinician workflows (opening a chart, ordering a medication, signing a note) over a standard webhook protocol.
In context
CDS Hooks defines well-known hook names (patient-view, medication-prescribe, order-select, order-sign) and a JSON payload format. When a clinician hits a hook point in their EHR, the EHR posts the hook payload to registered CDS services and renders the cards (recommendations, alerts, app launches) the services return.
CDS Hooks pairs naturally with SMART on FHIR: a card returned by a CDS service can launch a SMART app for the clinician to interact with. Together they cover trigger-driven and interactive clinical decision support.
How Fire Arrow handles it
Fire Arrow itself is the data backend, not the CDS service. A CDS service built on Fire Arrow uses the FHIR API (with on-behalf-of identity flow where appropriate) to read patient context and decide which cards to return.