## SMART on FHIR Method

The SMART on FHIR integration method for sending eReferrals involves sending referral information to a destination, but then the server presents a web interface to the user, which is used to facilitate a portion of the business logic associated with a referral.

This is in contrast to the "Direct" API integration method, where the user's client system is responsible for managing and displaying all of the business logic. 

An example of the differences between "Direct" and "SMART" would be:
* **Direct** - When transmitting a referral payload, the dataset must be complete in order to complete an eReferral on the first attempt, and the requesting system must know what set of information is required from the provider system.
* **SMART on FHIR** - When transmitting a referral payload, the requester can be presented with a webform showing all of the fields pre-filled with data from the payload. If there are more fields required to be filled, the user will be prompted to complete those fields in the browser, click submit, then return to their client application.

There are many advantages to using a SMART on FHIR method for eReferral processes. 
* Business Logic - The server system can decide which business logic and interface it wants to present to the user. This allows for a much more varied and adapted business process logic to be applied to an individual referral process.  
* Easy to Update - Once the integration is complete, changes in the business logic only need to be managed at the *server* level, with no intervention required at the *client* level.
* Ease of Integration - A SMART on FHIR integration is a fairly straightforward integrations for applications to deploy, as it does not require the client system to know much about the process it is facilitating.

The main drawback of the SMART on FHIR method is that few systems support SMART applications at this time, but it is growing, and SMART will be officially incorporated into the next (version 4) FHIR standard.