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Ever since Firely first proposed FHIR packages, back at the FHIR DevDays of 2017, these versioned groups of FHIR resources have really taken off! In 2018 we implemented the first FHIR Package Server in Simplifier and, with 1000s of packages published for all jurisdictions, they have become the standard for versioning FHIR resources as a group.

Private FHIR packages

Most FHIR specifications, and thus their FHIR package representations, are public. But sometimes you don't want everyone to know what you are working on (yet). Or maybe you have spent a lot of private or commercial time in representing healthcare knowledge, like questionnaires, terminology or guidelines, in FHIR and can't just give that away.

For this we have always supported private FHIR packages, but the support has been limited. You could only go one layer deep, so no building of private FHIR packages on top of your other private packages. And you weren't able to use them in many places. In our latest release we are changing this, with the release of FHIR Package Feeds!

FHIR Package Feeds

With package feeds you can group a set of private FHIR packages and determine who has access to them. Private packages within the feed can build on each other and you can use them within your projects, as the scope of your guide or within validation.

Private FHIR Package Feeds are available on all paid Simplifier plans.

Changes to how private packages work

For those who were already using the previous limited version of private FHIR packages, there are a few things you should know:

  • Your private packages have gotten their own package feed; one for every team that has private packages. Every project using private packages will need to choose a package feed to get its dependencies from and to publish packages to.
  • You will no longer be able to publish a private FHIR package from a public Simplifier project.
    • If you are creating non-sensitive packages for review, you can still create public packages labeled as a prerelease (using the - in the semver version, like 1.0.0-something) and/or unlist a package version afterwards.
    • You can also change a project to private and then create a private package.
  • Private package publishing via Firely Terminal is temporarily unavailable. This will require specifying a feed in the near future:
    • fhir publish-package will require --feed public or a reference to a specific private feed to indicate who should have access to the package.
  • Private package installing with Firely Terminal is temporarily unavailable. We are planning to have a new version of Firely Terminal supporting package feeds in the coming weeks. You can still download private packages via the user interface and install them from file with fhir install acme.private.base-0.0.1.tgz --file

Questions? Please reach out to the Simplifier support team.

Want to show the world what private FHIR packages you have on offer? Also have a look at our new Marketplace for FHIR.

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