Notes

Bulk export, and when a query is enough

A normal FHIR search returns one page of resources. That is the right call for one patient, one appointment, or a short schedule.

A population is different. Reading thousands of patients one request at a time is slow, and it is easy to miss a page. Bulk FHIR export is the standard for that job. The client asks the server to export a set of resources, the server prepares NDJSON files, and the client downloads them when they are ready. The call is asynchronous: the first response is a status URL, not the data.

Lynx Labs uses bulk export when the engagement moves a group of records, and ordinary FHIR reads and writes when the engagement works one record at a time. Bulk export usually runs as a backend client, with SMART Backend Services, and only for the resource types the client has granted.