Aidbox is undergoing a significant architectural shift by fully adopting the FHIR Schema engine that has been used in production environments by multiple Aidbox customers.
As part of this transition, the existing zen and EA (Entity/Attribute) engines will be obsolete in August 2025. The July 2025 version will become the LTS version supporting deprecated engines for two years.
Benefits of FHIR Schema engine
The adoption of FHIR Schema brings several benefits to Aidbox, including:
**FHIR conformance **Fully supports FHIR StructureDefinitions and FHIR npm packages, ensuring compatibility with the latest standards and tools in the FHIR ecosystem.
Smarter validation The FHIR Schema engine supports advanced features like FHIRPath invariants, slicing, and extensions, which allow you to apply precise, context-aware rules for more accurate and reliable validation of your resources. Plus, it gives you the flexibility to turn specific validation rules on or off based on your needs — so you stay in control without losing compliance.
Better performance TheFHIR Schema engine is 100 times faster than the official FHIR validator and 17 times faster than the zen validator. It is especially critical in high-load environments.
Ease of use Aidbox integrates with the official FHIR Implementation Guide (IG) feed, featuring 700+ unique IGs that can be loaded to Aidbox in minutes. Aidbox will resolve and load transitive dependencies.
Dynamic configuration Aidbox enables dynamic configuration with FHIR packages and canonical resources via UI and API with no restarts.
Timeline
July 2025:
Health Samurai will publish Aidbox 2507.x image that will be considered an LTS (long-term support) version. This version will receive only critical security fixes for 2 years and will be the last version that supports zen and Entity/Attribute engines.
August 2025 and later
Starting from 2508.x version Aidbox will work using the FHIR schema engine only. Everything defined using zen and Entity/Attribute will not work.
July 2027: Zen and Entity/Attribute engines will reach end-of-life. LTS support will end and no longer receive updates.
What you need to do
Please follow these steps to ensure smooth migration:
- Replace zen FHIR IGs with FHIR schema IGs.
- Migrate custom profiles built with zen and EA (Entity/Attribute) to FHIR StructureDefinitions or FHIR Schemas.
- Migrate custom resources built with zen and EA (Entity/Attribute) to FHIR StructureDefiniton or FHIR Schema.
- Migrate custom search parameters created using zen and EA (Entity/Attribute) to FHIR SearchParameters.
- Replace FTR (FHIR Terminology Repository) with an external terminology service or pre-expanded value sets loaded into the database.
- Replace zen seed import and seed v2 import with the Init bundle.
- Replace Aidbox-specific_include and _revinclude parameters with FHIR _include and _revinclude.
- Replace FHIR Topic-based subscriptions defined using zen with Aidbox topic-based subscriptions.
- Contact us if you use the Aidbox Workflow engine, so we can guide your migration.
We’re here to help
We know this transition needs careful planning. The Aidbox team will provide additional tooling and our Customer Success Team is ready to support you and answer any questions. Feel free to reach out for more guidance.
