Email Communication through CommunicationRequest?

I’m working on an implementation of a service that handles email communications to users. This communication involves appointment confirmations and account activities(account creation, password reset instructions, update email address, etc…).

I and my team are new to the FHIR ecosystem. We’ve identified the CommunicationRequest as the closest thing to what we’re looking for in the FHIR world, but I have concerns that we’re trying to solve every problem with the same solution.

Is this a solution that belongs in a FHIR service and, if so, is it the CommunicationRequest object as we have identified? My impression is that the CommunicationRequest, like the Communication Resource, is mostly geared towards auditing.

Thank you

Neither Communication or CommunicationRequest were really intended for this purpose. Their intention is to allow saying “please share this information with the patient or some other clinician” and to capture when the sharing has occurred. It can also be used to capture when a patient was given a pamphlet or something like that.

That said, I’m aware of at lease one place where Communication has been used to institute an “email over FHIR” solution. Communication is a slightly more apt resource because you’re not asking for a communication to occur in the future, you’re actually communicating. (So Communication with a status of “active”.)

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