FHIR .NET API
The official .NET SDK for working with HL7 FHIR, providing models, parsers, a REST client, validation, and FhirPath evaluation.
What is FHIR .NET API?
Firely .NET SDK is an official software development kit for the .NET platform that provides tools to work with HL7 FHIR, a standard for exchanging healthcare information electronically. It solves the problem of integrating .NET applications with FHIR-based systems by offering data models, parsers, a REST client, and validation capabilities. The SDK supports multiple FHIR specification versions, enabling developers to build interoperable healthcare solutions.
.NET developers and software engineers building healthcare applications, medical software, or systems that need to exchange data with FHIR-compliant servers. It is also suitable for organizations implementing FHIR interfaces in .NET environments.
Developers choose this SDK because it is the official, well-supported toolkit for FHIR on .NET, offering comprehensive features like FhirPath evaluation and multi-version support. Its active maintenance, commercial support options, and compatibility with FHIR specification updates provide reliability for production healthcare systems.
Overview
The official Firely .NET SDK for HL7 FHIR
Use Cases
Best For
- Building .NET applications that consume or provide FHIR APIs
- Developing healthcare interoperability solutions on the Microsoft stack
- Validating FHIR resources against specific profiles in .NET
- Evaluating FhirPath expressions on medical data
- Creating FHIR-compliant data models in C# or other .NET languages
- Integrating with electronic health record (EHR) systems using FHIR standards
Not Ideal For
- Projects stuck on .NET Framework versions that only support netstandard2.0 or below
- Teams needing lightweight FHIR API clients without full validation or FhirPath features
- Applications using custom healthcare data formats not based on HL7 FHIR standards
- Environments where annual breaking changes are unacceptable for production stability
Pros & Cons
Pros
Provides POCO classes, XML/JSON parsers, REST client, validation, and FhirPath evaluation—covering all essential FHIR operations for .NET developers.
Fully supports STU3, R4, R4B, and R5 specifications, allowing targeting of different FHIR releases as needed, with dedicated NuGet packages for each.
Issues are monitored on GitHub, with a Zulip chat for discussions, and optional commercial support from Firely for production environments.
Uses POCO classes for the FHIR data model, enabling compile-time safety and easier manipulation in .NET code, reducing runtime errors.
Cons
Major SDK releases come with breaking changes about once a year, requiring code updates and potentially disrupting long-term projects, as noted in the release notes.
Using pre-release NuGet packages requires adding a GitHub source and managing personal access tokens, adding overhead for early adopters.
The profile validator has been moved to a separate repository, complicating setup and maintenance for validation features, as mentioned in the upgrading section.
Frequently Asked Questions
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