This page is part of the International Patient Access (v0.1.0: STU 1 Ballot 1) based on FHIR R4. . For a full list of available versions, see the Directory of published versions

International Patient Access

Welcome to the International Patient Access API Specification

This specification describes how an application acting on behalf of a patient can access information about the patient from an clinical records system using a FHIR based API. The clinical records system may be supporting a clinical care provider (e.g. a hospital, or a general practitioner), or a health data exchange, including a national health record system.

Using this API, applications can access the following information about the patient:

• Basic patient details
• Problems / Conditions
• Medication orders and usage
• Immunization history
• Allergies and intolerances
• Vital signs and other clinical observations
• Clinical notes & other patient documents

These resources are supported by information about practitioners and their roles.

Relationship to National Specifications

This International Patient Access specification describes how to access patient records anywhere in the world. It provides a very minimal set of access methods and rules about the content that are true everywhere. Working healthcare systems need additional rules about the access API to meet other use cases, and make many additional rules about the content based on national laws, regulations and accepted practice in order to support the provision of health in their healthcare system.

No health care system implements the International Patient Access specification directly; instead, each country publishes their own national patient access specification that is consistent with this specification.

See International Patient Access by Country for a list of these specifications.

In addition, there is an International Patient Summary specification which specifies a more extensive set of rules about the content that clinical systems may conform to. See Relationship to the International Patient Summary for further details.

Using the International Patient Access API

• Getting access to a patient record and doing it in a secure fashion
• Finding/retrieving information about the patient (and generating documents by request)
• Maintaining a synchronized copy of the patient’s information and doing it safely
• Managing privacy and consent
• Internationalization - how to best support a wide range of international applications
• Application expectations, and how to test conformance

Notes:

• Not all servers provide all of this information
• This API is read-only, though implementations may provide write access too.