Default search parameters

For a general-purpose repository, using the default search parameters is useful since these parameters represent a wide variety of use cases. Additionally, using the default parameters is good for interoperability since clients may expect standard parameters to be supported across different servers.

The default search parameters are:

• name (Search for patient by name)
• birthdate (Search for patient by date of birth)
• identifier (Search for patient by identifier)

However, it is often useful to customize the supported search parameters. For example, you may want to:

• Add additional search parameters that will index fields that do not have a standard search parameter defined.
• Add additional search parameters that will index extensions used by your clients.
• Disable search parameters that are not used in order to improve performance and conserve space (disabling unnecessary search parameters can have a dramatic impact on write performance in some cases).