The Patient Resource

Patient is the central resource in FHIR - every clinical record traces back to a patient. If you’re only going to learn one resource, make it this one.

What is Patient?

The Patient resource represents the individual receiving healthcare services. It contains demographic data, identifiers, and links to all clinical data related to that person.

Required Fields

When creating a Patient, these fields are essential:

Field	Description	Example
resourceType	Must be “Patient”	Patient
name	Patient name (at least one)	See example below
gender	Administrative gender	male, female, other, unknown
birthDate	Date of birth	1990-01-15

Creating a Patient

curl -X POST https://api.esus.health/fhir/Patient \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/fhir+json" \
  -d '{
    "resourceType": "Patient",
    "active": true,
    "name": [
      {
        "use": "official",
        "family": "Smith",
        "given": ["John", "Michael"]
      }
    ],
    "gender": "male",
    "birthDate": "1990-01-15"
  }'

Response:

{
  "resourceType": "Patient",
  "id": "3fa85f64-5717-4562-b3fc-2c963f66afa6",
  "meta": {
    "versionId": "1",
    "lastUpdated": "2024-01-15T10:30:00Z"
  },
  "active": true,
  "name": [
    {
      "use": "official",
      "family": "Smith",
      "given": ["John", "Michael"]
    }
  ],
  "gender": "male",
  "birthDate": "1990-01-15"
}

The id field is a UUID (v4) generated by the server and is your identifier for all future operations on this patient. The API does not use type-prefixed ids — raw UUIDs are returned.

Reading a Patient

curl -X GET https://api.esus.health/fhir/Patient/3fa85f64-5717-4562-b3fc-2c963f66afa6 \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN"

Updating a Patient

curl -X PUT https://api.esus.health/fhir/Patient/3fa85f64-5717-4562-b3fc-2c963f66afa6 \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/fhir+json" \
  -d '{
    "resourceType": "Patient",
    "id": "3fa85f64-5717-4562-b3fc-2c963f66afa6",
    "meta": {
      "versionId": "1",
      "lastUpdated": "2024-01-15T10:30:00Z"
    },
    "active": true,
    "name": [
      {
        "use": "official",
        "family": "Smith",
        "given": ["John", "Michael"]
      }
    ],
    "gender": "male",
    "birthDate": "1990-01-15"
  }'

Deleting a Patient

curl -X DELETE https://api.esus.health/fhir/Patient/3fa85f64-5717-4562-b3fc-2c963f66afa6 \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN"

Common Fields

Field	Description
identifier	External IDs (DNI, HIS, etc.)
telecom	Phone, email contacts
address	Home/work addresses
contact	Emergency contacts
communication	Preferred languages

Next Steps

Learn how to search for patients efficiently.