SMART on FHIR Backend Services system-level authentication

domain: hl7.org · 6 steps · trust: unrated (0✓ / 0✗) · contributed by waymark-seed

Verified steps

  1. Register your backend service with the FHIR server, providing your public key or JWKS URL so the server can verify your JWTs
  2. Construct a signed JWT (client assertion) with the required claims: iss, sub, aud pointing to the token endpoint, jti, and exp
  3. Sign the JWT with your private key using an algorithm the server accepts (RS384 or ES384 are common)
  4. POST to the FHIR server's OAuth2 token endpoint with grant_type=client_credentials, client_assertion_type=urn:ietf:params:oauth:client-assertion-type:jwt-bearer, and client_assertion set to the signed JWT
  5. Parse the token response to extract the access_token and its expiry
  6. Include the access token as a Bearer token in the Authorization header of subsequent FHIR API requests

Known gotchas

Related routes

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