Popular open source FHIR libraries
Feb 15, 2021
With the FHIR standard rousing curiosity in healthcare circles, Redox has put together a list of the most popular open source FHIR Libraries!
1. HapiFHIR
Stars on github: 1,200
Language: Java
In their own words: HAPI FHIR is a complete implementation of the HL7 FHIR standard for healthcare interoperability in Java. We are an open community developing software licensed under the business-friendly Apache Software License 2.0. HAPI FHIR is a product of Smile CDR.
Want more? Here’s their Demonstration/public test server
2. Synthea Patient Population Simulator
Stars on github: 966
Language: Java, Freemarker
In their own words: SyntheaTM is a Synthetic Patient Population Simulator. The goal is to output synthetic, realistic (but not real), patient data and associated health records in a variety of formats.
Want more? Synthea has a great wiki where you’ll find their currently supported disease modules and their academic paper.
3. Microsoft AZURE FHIR server
Stars on github: 618
Language: C#, TSQL
In their own words: FHIR Server for Azure empowers developers – saving time when they need to quickly integrate a FHIR server into their own applications or providing them with a foundation on which they can customize their own FHIR service.
Want more? Here’s their Secure FHIR Gateway and Proxy to FHIR Servers
4. Firely
Stars on github: 555
Language: C#
In their own words: This is the official support SDK for working with HL7 FHIR on the Microsoft .NET platform.
Want more? Their library includes:
Class models for working with the FHIR data model using POCO's
Xml and Json parsers and serializers
A REST client for working with FHIR-compliant servers
Helper classes to work with the specification metadata, most notably StructureDefinition and generation of differentials
Validation of instances based on profiles
Evaluation FhirPath expressions
5. Google FHIR
Stars on github: 518
Language: Java, Python, Objective-C, and C++, Dart, Go, Ruby, and C#, Starlark, Shell, more to come!
In their own words: FhirProto is Google’s implementation of the FHIR Standard for Health Care data using Protocol Buffers (a language-neutral, platform-neutral extensible mechanism for serializing structured data). By leveraging Google’s core data storage format, FhirProto provides a type-safe, strongly validated FHIR format with cross-language support at a fraction of the size on disk.
Want more? Set up an environment with FHIR examples
6. Python SMART on FHIR
Stars on github: 314
Language: Python
In their own words: This is fhirclient, a flexible Python client for FHIR servers supporting the SMART on FHIR protocol. The client is compatible with Python 2.7.10 and Python 3
Want more? Their data model classes are built using fhir-parser, that handles (de)serialization and allow to work with FHIR data in a Pythonic way.
7. Javascript for FHIR
Stars on github: 304
Language: Javascript, Coffeescript, Shell
In their own words: JavaScript client for FHIR. Goals: Support FHIR CRUD operations; Friendly and expressive query syntax; Support for adapters that provide idiomatic interfaces in angular, jQuery, extjs, etc; Support for access control (HTTP basic, OAuth2, Cookies)
Want more? Their adapter implementations: jquery, YUI, AngularJS, Native, Node
Bonus: Asymmetrik
Stars on github: 256
Language: Javascript
In their own words: Open Source secure REST implementation for the HL7 FHIR Specification.
Want more? Mongo implementation example