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Introduction

This implementation guide is published by the Swedish eHealth Agency and constitutes the integration specification for Swedish medical record indexing using the HL7 FHIR standard. The APIs described in this guide ensure that all participating systems exchange medical record index information in a predictable and interoperable way.

Scope and Usage

This guide focuses on the format and exchange of index entries between participating systems. An index entry contains metadata describing the existence and location of patient related information in a source system, including the responsible organization. The specification includes:

  • Actor definitions within medical record indexing and their relevant transactions
  • Operations used by these actors
  • Request and response examples
  • Validation and error management
  • General guidance to support reading this FHIR specification

The specification applies to any system that needs to share medical record index information, including but not limited to EHR systems and indexing services.

Background and Context

In a distributed healthcare environment, patient‑related information is stored across multiple systems operated by different organizations. To allow these systems to discover where relevant information exists, they exchange index entries. The guide supports the following two use cases:

Creation of index records

Creation of an index record for a patient. This is done as soon as e.g. a new patient is registered in an EHR system and there is data about this patient available for retrieval. The creation of an index record includes a patient identifier, the responsible organization and a timestamp. For further details, read Create Index Record.

Unregistration of index records

Unregistration of medical index records is necessary in case the patient data is no longer existant in the source system that previously created an index post. The unregistration of an index record includes a patient identifier and organization identifier. For further details, read Unregister Index Record.

Contact

If you have any questions related to this specification, send an email to servicedesk@ehalsomyndigheten.se.