Patient Person Modelling
On FHIR relationships with Person and Patient
Understanding the Relationship Between Patient and Person FHIR Resources
In FHIR, the distinction between Patient and Person resources often sparks curiosity — and for good reason. While they may seem similar at a glance, their roles and interactions serve different, yet complementary purposes in healthcare data modeling.
🔹 Patient Resource:
Represents an individual who is receiving or has received care or services from a healthcare provider. This resource contains details about the person in the context of their healthcare journey — demographics, contact information, managing organization, and links to relevant encounters, conditions, and treatments.
🔹 Person Resource:
A broader concept — the Person resource represents any individual, whether they are a patient, practitioner, or related person. It’s often used to link multiple roles an individual might have in a healthcare system — for example, someone could be both a caregiver (related person) and a patient.
How do they interact?
The Patient resource can be linked to a Person resource through the link element, which helps establish relationships between records. This is particularly useful in cases like:
✅ Merging duplicate records — when the same individual has multiple patient records across systems.
✅ Role management — connecting a person's "practitioner" role to their own "patient" record.
✅ Cross-organization identity — tracking individuals who interact with multiple healthcare providers.
Why does this matter?
For anyone working with FHIR data, grasping these interactions is key to building clean, accurate data models. It ensures you're not just representing health encounters but also the multifaceted identities people hold within healthcare ecosystems.
Would love to hear — how have you tackled linking Patient and Person resources in your FHIR implementations? Let’s exchange ideas! 💡
