Endpoint Capability and Discovery

Understand endpoint capabilities and resolve where transactions can be exchanged.

Chapter 4 applies the common MAP capability declaration model to establish how endpoints declare support for Care Coordination for Maternal Health – Birth. It connects the transactions selected in Chapter 2 and the common requirements in Chapter 3 with endpoint-specific declarations of Technical Actor Roles, supported exchange options, and workflow status responsibilities. These declarations support endpoint discovery, exchange configuration, and the implementation guidance in Chapter 5.

An organization operating a Direct endpoint that asserts support for cc-maternal-health-birth SHALL publish an Endpoint Capability Statement for the conforming endpoint. Its authoritative computable form SHALL be a FHIR R4 CapabilityStatement conforming to the MAP Endpoint CapabilityStatement Profile. The CapabilityStatement SHALL also contain a meaningful human-readable narrative in text.div so the same resource can be inspected by people and processed by software.

An Endpoint Capability Statement identifies the use case, supported transactions, Sender Actor and Receiver Actor capabilities, metadata representations, information-object support, workflow status responsibilities, identifier namespaces, terminology choices, intended workflow, and operational information needed to configure and test exchange.

Endpoint-specific capability declarations complement Chapter 3 and the applicable Transaction Definitions. Common requirements remain applicable to every declared capability; endpoint choices identify the supported combinations within those requirements.

4.1 Purpose and Conformance Model

A CapabilityStatement provides a computable interoperability contract. Its declarations identify the supported combinations of transaction, Technical Actor Role, metadata representation, information-object option, and workflow status responsibility. These combinations support exchange configuration and define applicable conformance tests.

Endpoint → Use Case → Transaction → Technical Actor Role → Supported Exchange Options → Workflow Status Responsibilities. This chain organizes capability selection; it is not a transaction processing lifecycle.

The Sender Actor and Receiver Actor capabilities SHALL be declared independently. supportsSend identifies Sender Actor support; supportsReceive identifies Receiver Actor support. For example, supportsSend=false and supportsReceive=true declares support in the Receiver Actor role. An endpoint MAY support both roles.

Technical Actor Roles describe functional capabilities, rather than the organization’s business role or its transaction participation role. An ambulatory obstetric endpoint, for example, may send outpatient visit notifications and receive notifications generated by other providers. Organization labels such as hospital, payer, HIE, data utility, or HISP do not establish either capability.

Different Direct addresses or services operated by the same organization MAY have materially different capability sets. Publish a separate CapabilityStatement when those differences affect interoperability.