It’s a fantastic sign for the healthcare industry that the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standard is garnering a lot of recent attention. I’ve had conversations with several CIOs who are hearing that FHIR could be the next-generation standards framework that can help innovate data sharing at their organizations. I can understand why they’re excited. EMRs have been closed systems for a long time, which creates major challenges for organizations wanting to share data between disparate systems. The challenge is even greater for organizations engaging in population health initiatives because the open sharing of data between different systems and providers is a must. Provider organizations want to learn more about FHIR because it has the potential to help overcome these interoperability challenges.

Let’s explore FHIR a little deeper. There are a few important details to know in order to understand its potential to help:

FHIR is an evolving standard

Up until September 2015, there were two active versions - DSTU1 & DSTU2. DSTU2 is the new version, but some technology vendors are still using DSTU1. HL7, the creator of FHIR, is still working on a final standard expected to be released in 2017. Once the final standard is in place, it will likely take a few years for broader adoption.

Vendor approaches vary

Solution vendors are in the early stages of developing FHIR strategies. Some EMR vendors are prototyping the use of FHIR APIs to enable read access of certain resources from patient charts. Others are working on the ability to read and write data back into systems. The types of data models that can be accessed using FHIR APIs also vary. For example, one vendor may support Patient, Allergy and Medication data models, but may not support Family History, Immunization, CareTeam or PlanofCare data models. Vendors can also vary whether they enable just read or read and write for each of the data models.

The use case is discrete data sharing

FHIR was designed for discrete data sharing, i.e., sharing of small batches of patient data. If you need to share one or two or ten bits of data, then FHIR can help. It is not intended for high volume data ingestion required for large scale aggregation.

FHIR is not the only game in town

Web services with REST-based APIs can already accomplish what FHIR seeks to achieve. Our customers don’t have to wait for FHIR, they can solve their data sharing challenges today using our rich and open web services data connectors that include role-based security controls and auditability. Caradigm has built unique applications like Knowledge Hub that can share real-time data and information from third-party applications directly within clinician workflows in their EMR. In the UK population health market, we have built mobile applications using REST-based APIs that can share patient data pulled from multiple sources to a mobile application at the point-of-care.

Caradigm fundamentally believes in open standards, data sharing, and in democratizing information to drive innovation in healthcare. That’s why we support an extensive number of data models, and have always been on the cutting edge of supporting emerging models such as NLP, unstructured models and now FHIR. We are able to engage services for FHIR API integrations, and will continue to build access to entities in the Caradigm Intelligence Platform including deeper integrations with specific EMRs. Caradigm also collaborates with other industry leaders on emerging standards by participating annually in events such as the IHE North American Connectathon Week (see this post about last year’s event). We look forward to participating in the next Connectathon in January.

Ultimately, there are many ways to approach population health, and Caradigm partners closely with our customers to understand their goals and challenges in order to help them develop strategies. We’re excited at the prospect of FHIR being part of the solution for our customers. If you’d like to discuss FHIR more and how it fits into your population health strategies, then please reach out to us here.