Setting HAPI FHIR Server: Developer’s guide

FHIR is a standard for healthcare data exchange, published by HL7. FHIR servers are vital tools for facilitating healthcare interoperability. Open source and proprietary are the two types of FHIR servers.

The Open-source FHIR server is free to use. It provides all the basic features to develop custom solutions. The most famous open FHIR is the HAPI FHIR server. Let’s dig deeper into the concept and learn how to set up your own HAPI FHIR server.

What is HAPI FHIR Server?

As we mentioned earlier, the HAPI FHIR server is an open-source type of FHIR server. It is a full implementation of the HL7 FHIR standard for healthcare interoperability in Java. HAPI is a free community that develops licensed software under Apache Software License 2.0.

It is a product of Smile CDR. HAPI FHIR server offers many features that are available with Proprietary FHIR servers. And being an open source with all these features makes it the most preferable one for FHIR implementation.

How to set up a HAPI FHIR Server?

Following the given steps will let you easily set up your own FHIR server. There are a few ways to set up your FHIR server. 

Docker: The simple & easy way to do it

1. First- Install Docker Desktop or Docker on your machine. This need to be done before gathering the requirements for setting up the HAPI FHIR Server.
2. Second- After installing the Docker, clone the code for the HAPI FHIR server from the “HAPI FHIR git repo”.
3. Third- After the cloning, go to the HAPI FHIR folder in your local. Run the command: | docker compose up

This downloads all the tributaries that HAPI FHIR Server may need to run. This process alone takes a good amount of time.

Running HAPI FHIR Server as JAVA Application

If the first option didn’t work out for you, you can use this method to install the HAPI FHIR server on your machine. 

1. Install JAVA 11 or greater on your machine.
2. Also, install maven.
3. After installing these, build the project using the following command:

| maven clean install

1. After successfully doing this, run your server using the command:

| mvn jetty:run

1. This will work out and run the HAPI FHIR server and you will get the result.

HAPI FHIR Server: Public

Still not being able to start your FHIR server? Don’t worry, there is another way! HAPI FHIR provides a public FHIR server. But before accessing the Public FHIR server, you must make sure of the following things;

1. It’s public so does not store production FHIR data on this server.
2. Again it’s public so there will be no guarantee of data consistency. The data will be cleaned regularly.

HL7 FHIR Services from Capminds

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