Fundamental Principles of FHIR

Precepts are (Ron - insert language explaining precepts here)

See also Establishing Precepts in HL7

See Also FHIR Governance Precepts for early FGB start at a precepts spread sheet

FHIR prioritizes implementation

This is the most fundamental precept of FHIR. Most other precepts exist to support this objective.

Rationale: Standards that don't get implemented (or are implemented poorly) benefit no-one. Standards that place theoretical correctness, clinical appropriateness, modeling approach, preferred architecture or any other priority above implementability are unlikely to see significant adoption and thus will produce little overall benefit. That doesn't mean that other considerations can't be taken into account, only that implementability must remain a primary objective.

FHIR is free

All information that is essential to developing and implementing systems that can communicate using FHIR should be available to all interested parties without cost

Rationale: FHIR is a standard that supports interoperability in spaces that HL7 has not traditionally worked in. As a result, many of those who will need the standard are not members (and are unlikely to become members) to see if FHIR is relevant/right for them. As well, many implementers and governmental projects are reluctant to make use of standards that aren't freely available. Interoperability standards benefit from a network effect - the more broadly they're supported, the more useful they are.

FHIR keeps the common things simple

FHIR generally follows the Pareto principle in that FHIR standardizes the most-common 80% of healthcare data, workflow, and related challenges. The remaining 20% represent more realm- or speciality-centric issues.

FHIR standardizes common content

• see 20140415_FGB_concall