Ontario Provincial Health Services Directory (PHSD) – HL7® FHIR® Implementation Guide v1.0.0 TU

The PHSD implementation guide provides guidance for implementations supporting HL7 FHIR® to query practitioner and organization records from the Ontario Health Provincial Provider Registry (PPR). It includes business context, use cases and business rules of PPR, as well as PPR FHIR profiles for consuming PPR data using HL7 FHIR®.

Scope

The scope of the PHSD implementation guide is to provide functional implementation guidance for the HL7 FHIR operations defined to query the Ontario Health Provincial Provider Registry (PPR). This document is a 'point in time' reference which represents that most current 'dialect' of FHIR Standard for Trial Use that the PPR supports. This implementation guide is based on FHIR R4.

A centralized and up-to-date service directory would provide:

• Advance, faster, more equitable access to care that is guided by patient choice and preference, people living in Ontario and their providers will have access to up-to-date, reliable and accurate information that is freely available and easy to use when accessing primary care, specialist care and community services
• The provider information, enclosed in a single Source of Truth repository, offers a true representation of the Ontario Health System services in a form consistent with consumer's needs (patients and providers).

The Provincial Healthcare Service Directory will be made available through three services:

• FHIR Restful APIs (Search, Retrieve)
• FHIR Bulk Export API ($export) / FHIR Bulk Import operation ($import) 
• FHIR Pub/Sub Service using Ontario Health Enterprise Pub/Sub architecture

Status

The provincial open review period starts September 25, 2025, and runs to October 24, 2025. Download the comment spreadsheet to provide feedback.

This implementation guide is for trial use and is subject to a formal review and approval process. 

FHIR is an evolving trial-for-use standard, so additional changes by HL7 are expected. We will continue to monitor developments and assess any potential impacts and publish updates as they emerge.

*SIMPLIFIER.NET is a web-based FHIR registry built by Firely that serves as the hosting platform for the Canadian FHIR Registry sponsored by Canada Health Infoway.