Interoperability has always been a challenge and have also been a key to success for many enterprises. Integrating systems to exchange business data within enterprises and with business partners based on different standard formats remains a gamechanger across all industries, including retail, health care, banking, manufacturing, and other services.
In this post, I am going to discuss about healthcare data interoperability. The path to healthcare data interoperability can often be elusive because of sophisticated and complex healthcare ecosystem. The healthcare domain is not only deep, but it is also wide too, which presents a considerable design challenge for data interoperability.
From over 20 years, HL7 (Health Level Seven), is the standard for exchanging data between healthcare systems. HL7v2 (HL7 Version 2), is the most widely implemented clinical interoperability standard.
Health Level Seven International (commonly known as HL7), has developed a next-generation standard for health care data exchange known as FHIR, Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources.
What is FHIR?
FHIR is becoming the preferred standard for how we exchange electronic health information as it offers more than a standard solving existing problems in interoperability, it provides a platform for the future. Now more than ever data is at the center of health care and it is growing every single day. With FHIR standard everything that you can think about in healthcare system is modeled as what we call a “resource“.
The idea behind FHIR is to share specific pieces of information, such as symptoms, medications, procedures, appointments, without passing along entire documents. Each discrete chunk of data is basically a resource which are the common building blocks and makes it possible for patients, doctors and researchers to get the information they need on any device or browser, regardless of where the data is stored. FHIR uses modern web standards and its design is based on RESTful architecture.
Why do we need FHIR?
- HL7 is been developed way before the internet was ubiquitous and hence lack lots of efficiencies gained over the last decade that basically every other industry uses.
- FHIR supports RESTful architectures, so it easily enables healthcare systems to exchange common medical and healthcare financial data.
- FHIR enable patient to share their health data easily and securely across health care providers.
- FHIR can help break down the heath data in silo systems and bring data transparency to all.
- It can provide new opportunities with analytics, machine learning, and actionable intelligence across your health data.
- FHIR removes participation barriers and enables clinician-led technology innovations.
21st century cures act: interoperability
Recently US Department of Health and Human announces that starting January 1, 2021, Medicare Advantage, Medicaid, CHIP and plans on the federal Exchanges (that begin in 2021) will be required to support a standardized API (HL7 FHIR version 4.0.1) that allows patients to access claims and various information related to their medical encounter, such as cost or clinical information, through a third-party app of their choice. The API could also be used to integrate a health plan’s information to a patient’s EHR.
You can also refer these documents which specify several new requirements laid out in the 21st Century Cures Act
- HHS Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information
- Technology (ONC) Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)
Who cares about FHIR?
FHIR can be the fuel for innovation in healthcare & life sciences, and that’s the reason six of the world’s largest technology giants Microsoft, Amazon, Google, IBM, Oracle, and Salesforce have committed to remove the barriers to healthcare data interoperability.
They have issued joint statement for healthcare interoperability during CMS Blue Button 2.0 Developer Conference in year 2018. They reaffirm the commitment to interoperability again in 2019.
Microsoft offers Azure API for FHIR to easily create and deploy a Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR®) service for health data solutions.
Amazon offers FHIR Serverless Architecture for Building a Serverless FHIR Interface on AWS
Google offers Cloud Healthcare API to accelerate your healthcare solution development with fully managed, enterprise-scale, HL7® FHIR®, HL7® v2, and DICOM® APIs. Help protect your healthcare data while meeting industry-specific security, privacy, and compliance requirements.
IBM offers IBM FHIR Server to enhance health data interoperability
Oracle offers a way to Setting Healthcare data on FHIR
Salesforce offers Accelerator for Healthcare for Driving Healthcare Interoperability and Promoting Trust
Conclusion
Technology is revolutionizing the healthcare industry, but to take the full advantage you would need to overcome the challenge of healthcare data interoperability so that disparate systems can easily communicate to each other. HL7 FHIR standard can help you to solve the interoperability problem and make it easier to exchange data between healthcare systems.
The goal of FHIR is basically to improve the way healthcare data is exchanged so that it can be used to accelerate research and innovation to make healthcare care better for patient and providers.
In the following posts, I would be exploring how to get started with FHIR solution offered by Microsoft, Amazon, Google, IBM, Oracle, and Salesforce.