Azure API for FHIR

Developer Support

In this post, App Dev Manager Deepak Malik introduces FIHR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) APIs on Azure.


FHIR is Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources which is a standard format for data exchange solution for protected health information (PHI). Azure API for FHIR is an implementation to connect existing data resources to build and extend intelligence around the data.

Why do we need FHIR?

  • Healthcare is shifting and patients do share the health data across organizations at higher rates than before.
  • Data transparency is important to all and a standard like FHIR weighs better than silo systems.
  • Migration to online systems highlights the need for a standard for implementers of technology.
  • With evolution of analytics technologies, FHIR data structures allow better processing.

Azure API for FHIR provides the ability to collect data from disparate systems and provides the standardized semantics and data exchange to work together, available on cloud, making it a robust offering for healthcare companies. With access to data from multiple systems in standard format, combined with advances analytical capabilities, promotes better health outcomes and connects intelligently with customer’s existing business and productivity applications.

With hosting on Azure platform, PHI data is secured using advanced threat protection and industry compliance standards. Azure covers more than 90 compliance certifications, including ISO 27001, and meets HIPAA regulatory requirements.

The service is available as a PaaS service and is charged based on:

  • Azure API for FHIR bills for the service runtime that provides RESTful API layer, Structured storage and Provisioned Throughput for the storage. The service runtime is billed for every hour and covers the compute. supporting the RESTful API layer that sits on top of the backend storage.
  • Structured Storage is billed for each GB used for SSD-backed data and index.
  • Provisioned throughput is expressed in Request Units per second (RU/s), which can be used for various database operations (e.g., inserts, reads, replaces, upserts, deletes, queries, etc.). Customers can provision throughput and elastically scale in increments of 100 RU/s via Azure Portal.

Refer to documentation for more details.

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