Developers vs. Users vs. M2M Clients (Actors)
In ZapEHR, an Actor is any of the three ZapEHR resources capable of getting an access token to invoke ZapEHR's APIs. The three different types of Actors are:
- Developers — Developer accounts are used to log into the Developer Console and administrate Projects.
- Users — Users are the people who log into the Applications you configure for securing the apps you build on top of ZapEHR.
- M2M Clients — M2M Clients are used to access ZapEHR APIs from scripts and server-side code like Zambda Functions.
| Actor | Can log into the ZapEHR Developer Console | Can log into your ZapEHR Applications | Is a Person | Authenticates with OAuth 2.0 Authorization Code Flow | Authenticates with OAuth 2.0 Client Credentials Flow |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Developer | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ||
| User | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ||
| M2M Client | ✅ |
- Learn how to authenticate as a Developer.
- Learn how to authenticate as a User.
- Learn how to authenticate as an M2M Client.
FHIR Profile
Terminology: FHIR Profile
Every Actor has a FHIR resource that represents them in the FHIR store which is called their "FHIR Profile". The Actor's FHIR Profile serves a few purposes:
- The FHIR Profile documents the existence of the Actor in the FHIR store with an appropriate FHIR resource. You can fill out as much of the information in this resource as suits your use case.
- When the Actor creates a FHIR resource, ZapEHR automatically creates a FHIR Provenance record that credits the actor's FHIR Profile in Provenance.agent.who (opens in a new tab).
- The ZapEHR Messaging and Telemedicine Services grant Actors access to Conversations and Video Rooms based on the Actors' FHIR Profile being recorded in Encounter.participant.actor (opens in a new tab).
Disambiguation: Do not confuse an Actor's FHIR profile with FHIR profiling (opens in a new tab).
Actor FHIR Profile Resource Types
| Actor | FHIR Resource |
|---|---|
| Developer | Practitioner |
| User | Patient, Practitioner |
| M2M Client | Device |