FHIR expertise — it’s more than just resource types.
You do not need intimate knowledge of all 145 resource types to be proficient and to work well with FHIR.
Most devs who work with FHIR are only ever exposed to a small number of resource types. There’s the basics that we all use:
- Patient
- Practitioner
- Organization
- Provenance
But beyond these your experience and exposure will vary depending on your use case.
If you work with insurance data you might be familiar with the 13 resource types in FHIR’s financial module: https://darrendevitt.com/fhirs-financial-module/
If your solution focuses on medications, chances are you’ll use some or all of FHIR’s medication resources: https://darrendevitt.com/medications-in-fhir/
If you’re capturing and dealing with DICOM images you will probably use the 7 resource types in the diagnostic imaging module: https://darrendevitt.com/diagnostic-imaging-in-fhir/
But there’s unlikely to be much crossover unless you’re building a HIS.
Most use cases are small and localized and that’s reflected in the FHIR resources used.
A mistake developers new to FHIR often make — they focus their time and efforts on understanding individual resource types and not on the fundamentals:
- Data Types
- Terminology
- Resource References
- Search queries
- Profiles
If you’re new to FHIR, invest your time here.
Understanding the building blocks of FHIR is more important than how many resource types you know about.
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