FHIR comes with gentle and steep learning curves.
The gentle curve makes it possible for a developer new to FHIR to be productive within hours.
The steep curve means that that productivity is “entry level” at best. They can run a search query or update a resource using an SDK.
The steep curve is where FHIR gets interesting. It’s where the complicated bits live and it’s where the fun is to be had.
Here are 10 things I learned about FHIR in the past year — on that steep curve.
- How to batch GET requests.
- How composite search parameters work — or don’t!
- How to create custom search parameters on an extension value that has two different data types.
- How functionally ‘incomplete’ so many of the brand name FHIR servers are.
- How powerful slicing can be when defining profiles.
- That FHIR R6 is coming faster than expected and may be more normalized than expected.
- That non-conforming FHIR data is common.
- That you can’t run heavy analytics queries on FHIR servers.
- The very real power of conditional updates and creates.
- That you can add extensions to primitive data types.
And a bonus: How to POST search queries.
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