Draft PH Core Implementation Guide - Local Development build (v0.2.0) built by the FHIR (HL7® FHIR® Standard) Build Tools. See the Directory of published versions
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Official URL: http://doh.gov.ph/fhir/ph-core/ImplementationGuide/fhir.ph.core
Project Status: In Development
This Implementation Guide is under active development and is not yet available for public or production use. Content, data models, and implementation details are subject to change.
The Philippine Core FHIR Implementation Guide (PH Core IG) defines the nationally agreed core clinical and administrative data standards for interoperable health information exchange in the Philippines. It provides a common, implementable foundation for health systems to consistently exchange data using the HL7® FHIR® standard.
PH Core IG sits between the PH Base IG (foundational national rules) and program- or use case–specific IGs (such as the NHDR IG). It standardizes commonly used FHIR profiles, extensions, terminology bindings, and conformance expectations that are applicable across health programs, facilities, and systems nationwide.
Project Background
PH Core is actively being developed by UP Manila National TeleHealth Center, under the guidance of the Phillippines Department of Health, with technical assistance from CSIRO Australia.
The initial draft of IG will be tested in the Connectathon to validate proof of concept and direction settings for the Philippines Core IG development process.
Purpose and Scope
The PH Core IG aims to:
Promote nationwide consistency and interoperability of health data
Support alignment with national policies such as JAO 2021-0002
Enable reuse of HL7 and international FHIR artifacts
Provide clear, testable specifications for system implementers
This guide focuses on core clinical and administrative resources (e.g., Patient, Practitioner, Organization, Encounter, Observation) that are widely applicable across multiple use cases. It does not define program-specific workflows or reporting payloads, which are addressed by downstream Implementation Guides.
Usage of this Guide
Health information systems implement PH Core profiles as a baseline for interoperability
Program-specific IGs inherit from PH Core and apply additional constraints
Developers and vendors use the guide to build and validate FHIR-conformant systems
Policy and governance bodies use it as a reference for national standardization
Development and Governance
The PH Core IG is developed through a collaborative, open, and standards-based process, involving the Department of Health (DOH), PhilHealth, UP Manila, and key technical partners. Development follows international best practices, uses open-source tooling (FHIR Shorthand, GitHub, IG Publisher), and is governed through structured review and change control mechanisms.
Relationship with other IGs
PH Core:
defines a set of conformance requirements that enforce a set of ‘minimum requirements’ on the local concepts, specifying rules for the elements, extensions, vocabularies, and value sets, and the RESTful API interactions.
for use by the stakeholders in the Philippines when implementing FHIR to provide a common implementation and to be built upon when creating further profiles and implementation guides.
conformance may become tied to regulatory and/or contractual agreements in order to necessitate adoption to this more prescriptive specification.
The context of PH Core within the set of FHIR Standards is shown in the diagram below.
Usage
PH Core is particularly useful in defining:
A testable level of system conformance
Assumed support by client applications
The basis of downstream implementation guides
Implementation of capabilities defined in PH Core enables specifications, applications and business logic to be developed with confidence.
This publication includes IP covered under the following statements.
These codes are excerpted from ASTM Standard, E1762-95(2013) - Standard Guide for Electronic Authentication of Health Care Information, Copyright by ASTM International, 100 Barr Harbor Drive, West Conshohocken, PA 19428. Copies of this standard are available through the ASTM Web Site at www.astm.org.
This material contains content that is copyright of SNOMED International. Implementers of these specifications must have the appropriate SNOMED CT Affiliate license - for more information contact https://www.snomed.org/get-snomed or info@snomed.org.
This is an R4 IG. None of the features it uses are changed in R4B, so it can be used as is with R4B systems. Packages for both R4 (fhir.ph.core.r4) and R4B (fhir.ph.core.r4b) are available.
This IG defines the global extensions - the ones defined for everyone. These extensions are always in scope wherever FHIR is being used (built Mon, Feb 10, 2025 21:45+1100+11:00)
Package hl7.fhir.uv.tools.r4#1.1.2
This IG defines the extensions that the tools use internally. Some of these extensions are content that are being evaluated for elevation into the main spec, and others are tooling concerns (built Tue, Mar 24, 2026 11:13+1100+11:00)
Draft PH Core Implementation Guide
FHIR Tooling Extensions IG