📚 2. FHIR basics

This learning unit introduces the ideas and technologies behind HL7^® FHIR^®1 in plain language. It is designed for healthcare professionals, analysts, project teams, and other beginners who want to understand FHIR without needing a software-development background.

What you will learn

By the end of this unit, you will be able to:

• explain why healthcare systems need interoperable, machine-readable data;
• describe when and why FHIR was created;
• recognize the broad clinical, administrative, and research scope of FHIR;
• explain the client-server model using a familiar real-world analogy;
• distinguish REST from SOAP and understand why REST is central to FHIR;
• recognize JSON and XML as structured formats used to exchange FHIR resources; and
• follow a simple clinical workflow from a request to a result represented with FHIR.

Lessons in this unit

1. The problem FHIR wants to solve — interoperability and machine-readable healthcare information.
2. The creation of FHIR in 2011 — the historical and technological context in which FHIR emerged.
3. The scope of FHIR — the clinical, administrative, and research information FHIR can represent.
4. The client-server model — the basic interaction pattern behind modern web applications.
5. HTTP, REST and SOAP — a web protocol and two approaches used in web services.
6. JSON and XML — structured formats used to represent FHIR resources.
7. Summary — the complete flow of an example chest X-ray request and result.
8. Useful links — official documentation and further reading.

You can complete the lessons in order or use the list as a reference. No programming exercises or prior technical knowledge are required.

Start with the interoperability problem →