Page Status: draft updated 2025-02-14

Extensions

Page index

• Introduction

Introduction

The HL7 FHIR specification covers the most common resource types and the most common elements within those resources for the healthcare industry. Concepts that are of less common use can be added to the generic resources by adding so called FHIR extensions.

The Swedish National Catalog of Organization, Offerings and Contracts relies on extensions to extend the generic and international FHIR specification with concepts specific to Sweden and the purpose of the Swedish National Catalog of Organization, Offerings and Contracts. See List of all Extensions for a list of all extensions used in the catalog.

In the Swedish National Catalog of Organization, Offerings and Contracts all incoming resources are interpreted as its base resource with the constraints and extensions specified in the profile and in other documentation, e.g. use cases (sv: tillämpningsanvisningar).

It is important to understand that extensions are mutable. A profile may evolve by adding new extensions. Systems must be able to handle this as long as the new data is not vital for existing use cases. This applies to standard FHIR elements also. Elements not used in one version may come to use in a later version.