SMART on FHIR is the application-platform layer built on top of FHIR. Where FHIR defines the data resources, SMART adds the missing pieces an app needs to run securely inside a clinical system: authorization profiles based on OAuth2 and OpenID Connect, launch contexts that open your application from within the EHR with the current patient already selected, and scopes that precisely bound what the app is permitted to read or write. Together these turn a raw data API into a safe way to embed third-party functionality in a clinician's workflow.
For a telemedicine product, SMART on FHIR is how your video or scheduling feature can appear natively inside an Epic or Oracle Health workflow — launched in context, with the right patient loaded and the clinician already authenticated — without building custom, fragile plumbing for every individual hospital site. That native launch experience is often what distinguishes a product clinicians will actually adopt from one they treat as a separate, disruptive system they have to leave the chart to use.
There is also regulatory leverage worth using. Because certified EHRs are required to support standardized SMART app launch, a product team can point to that mandate during integration negotiations rather than accepting a vendor's claim that a custom, proprietary integration is the only option. The common pitfall is requesting overly broad scopes or skipping the standardized launch in favor of a one-off integration, which both raises security review friction and forfeits the portability that SMART was designed to give you across sites.
The handbook · 7 volumes
Fora Soft Video Engineering Handbook
SMART on FHIR lets your video visit launch inside Epic or Cerner with the right patient already in context. Our handbook covers the whole video stack across seven volumes; for EHR-embedded video start with Volume 7: agents and tool integration, compliance and vertical playbooks. Volume 3 covers WebRTC calls in the browser; Volume 1 covers encoding. Written by Nikolay Sapunov, CEO at Fora Soft.
Need your video visits to launch inside Epic or Cerner via SMART on FHIR?
We will design the SMART on FHIR launch, auth and context hand-off for your video app and give you an integration plan per EHR. 250+ video products shipped since 2005.
