Supported FHIR Features

FHIR® service in Azure Health Data Services (hereby called FHIR service) provides a fully managed deployment of the open-source FHIR Server and is an implementation of the FHIR standard. This document lists the main features of the FHIR service.

FHIR version

Latest version supported: 4.0.1

Previous versions also currently supported include: 3.0.2

REST API

Below is a summary of the supported RESTful capabilities. For more information on the implementation of these capabilities, see FHIR REST API capabilities.

API Azure API for FHIR FHIR service in Azure Health Data Services Comment
read Yes Yes
vread Yes Yes
update Yes Yes
update with optimistic locking Yes Yes
update (conditional) Yes Yes
patch Yes Yes Support for JSON Patch and FHIRPath Patch only.
patch (conditional) Yes Yes Support for JSON Patch and FHIRPath Patch only.
history Yes Yes
create Yes Yes Support both POST/PUT
create (conditional) Yes Yes Issue #1382
search Partial Partial See Overview of FHIR Search.
chained search Yes Yes
reverse chained search Yes Yes
batch Yes Yes
transaction No Yes
paging Partial Partial self and next are supported
intermediaries No No

Extended Operations

All the operations that are supported that extend the REST API.

Search parameter type Azure API for FHIR FHIR service in Azure Health Data Services Comment
$export (whole system) Yes Yes Supports system, group, and patient.
$convert-data Yes Yes
$validate Yes Yes
$member-match Yes Yes
$patient-everything Yes Yes
$purge-history Yes Yes
$import No Yes
$bulk-delete Yes Yes

Role-based access control

FHIR service uses Microsoft Entra ID for access control.

Service limits

  • Bundle size - Each bundle is limited to 500 items.
  • Subscription Limit - By default, each subscription is limited to a maximum of 10 FHIR services. The limit can be used in one or many workspaces.
  • Storage size - By default each FHIR instance is limited to storage capacity of 4TB. To provision a FHIR instance with storage capacity beyond 4TB, create support request with Issue type 'Service and Subscription limit (quotas)'.

Next steps

In this article, you've read about the supported FHIR features in the FHIR service. For information about deploying FHIR service, see

FHIR® is a registered trademark of HL7 and is used with the permission of HL7.