No resource types in FHIR are truly static. But some are more static than others.
Patients are created “as and when.” They have Conditions, Encounters and Procedures. They make Claims, are prescribed Medications and have Appointments.
These resource types are created and updated every working day. Thousands of times a day.
There are other resource types that are more fixed. They are less likely to be changed and are more likely to hold a special place in the FHIR server.
I think of these as ‘static’ resource types.
They often refer to a fixed object — an entity, a person, a service or a place.
Here are some examples:
- Organization
A hospital, a clinic, an insurance company. - Location
A physical location of another object — an organization’s address, an operating theatre, an off-site clinic. - Device
While a pacemaker Device may be created “as and when”, that’s unlikely to be true for a $500,000 MRI scanner. - HealthcareService
The services provided by an organization, such as an ER, a pharmacy or an online patient portal. - Practitioner
A person — often a doctor or a nurse — involved in providing healthcare services.
These resource types are almost always configured or set up shortly after the FHIR server is created, and they exist in one form or another for the lifetime of the server and the data it contains.
That MRI scanner may be out of date in 10 years, but its Device resource will always be there — linked to the procedures it carried out.
Static resource types usually require special management. They rarely flow in from other channels, and there might be special rules around who is allowed to create or update them.
Developers should treat them with caution. While the resource types may be exposed, this does not mean you should update them casually or without business input.
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