Introducing FHIR Toolkit: Bringing FHIR R4 Development into JetBrains IDEs
FHIR Toolkit — bringing FHIR R4 development into JetBrains IDEs - DEV Community
Summary
The open-source JetBrains plugin, "FHIR Toolkit," significantly improves the FHIR R4 development workflow. It aims to eliminate the manual effort of validation and reference resolution that typically occurs when editing JSON in separate tools, allowing all processes to be completed within the IDE.
Details
This article introduces the "FHIR Toolkit," a free, open-source plugin for JetBrains IDEs (IntelliJ, PyCharm, etc.). The toolkit integrates various FHIR R4 functionalities directly into the IDE to enhance the efficiency of working with JSON descriptions in healthcare interoperability. The core features include: 1) Inline FHIR JSON validation using HAPI FHIR R4, which surfaces errors and warnings as you type; 2) Automated generation of resource templates (e.g., Patient, Observation); 3) Contextual documentation via hover on data properties; 4) Bundle reference navigation, allowing jumps between related resources within a Bundle; and 5) Hover lookups for code systems like LOINC and SNOMED CT. Version v0.2 added advanced features such as the "Resource tree tool window" (for viewing active JSON as a collapsible tree), the "Bundle Graph tool window" (to check internal consistency of references), an integrated FHIRPath playground, and an embedded mock FHIR server running locally. The developer emphasizes that the plugin operates entirely within the IDE without telemetry or network calls, ensuring patient data remains local and private.
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