How FHIR Can Take Interoperability to New Heights

Communication is essential within the medical field. Whether relaying the correct dosage of a life-saving medication or receiving a patient’s allergy list, shareable information is the foundation of a safe and efficient healthcare system.

In the digital age, one might assume access to critical information is as simple as searching a patient’s name. However, several barriers impede data exchange between organizations, including a lack of time and resources to convert existing records, privacy concerns, and “paper chart holdouts” — medical professionals who refuse to use electronic records. As a result, interoperability between hospitals, pharmacies, private practices, and consumer-oriented medical companies suffer.

With the rise of personal medical devices and an increasing amount of Electronic Health Records (EHRs), patients and providers are hopeful for a solution that can capitalize on data in order to produce better health outcomes.

The Potential of FHIR

That’s where the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resource (FHIR) comes in. Developed by the Health Level Seven International (HL7), the FHIR is a draft data standard that aims to improve data exchange. Taking an internet-based approach, FHIR streamlines disparate data collections by creating a set of standard resources.

While interoperability once relied on the sharing of individual documents through email, fax, and paper systems, FHIR provides unique tags (like website URLs) for health data. As a result, medical professionals can move beyond document exchange to a more holistic data-exchange system. Suddenly, a doctor can review a new patient’s entire medical history rather than request a dozen separate files on their surgery outcomes, current medications, and family history. The doctor could also update the patient’s EHR or extract data from it on the spot.

The History of EHRs and FHIR

Electronic health records have been in use since the 1960s. At first, major hospitals used EHRs for scheduling and billing purposes, but as adoption became more widespread throughout the 1980s, providers began to record patient data using digital systems.

Fast forward and by 2017, nearly every hospital system used certified health information technology and 9 out of 10 private physicians’ offices conducted electronic record keeping. While collected data has swelled in the years since, efforts to make sense of those thousands of data points has lagged.

FHIR has existed in some form since 2011, but its most recent release (the normative version) came in 2019. Its creator, HL7, is a non-profit focused on global interoperability that governments look to for setting industry standards. By 2020, the 21st Century Cures Act made FHIR the standard for healthcare IT certification in the United States.

Like the acceptance of any new technology, full implementation will take time. FHIR promises a simpler, more accessible healthcare system for everyone involved — from patients, to professionals, to commercial interests.

Improving Medical Experiences for All

Current healthcare data is fragmented, leaving room for gaps and redundancies in patient and population information. For instance, if someone from New York is injured while on vacation in another state and the ER doctor cannot find their records, the physician may create an entirely new document for basic things like blood type, height, and age.

An active resource that complies with FHIR standards can prevent an already stressed patient from being needled by repetitive questions. This can in turn speed up the care process, leave more time to address patient concerns, and free up a provider to help another patient.

One of the main reasons hospitals struggle to adjust to new programs is that the process often adds work onto the shoulders of already burned-out providers. FHIR is built to interact with artificially intelligent systems, offering streamlined data sets to AI researchers. AI models can then collect and interpret this information and return it to providers as a clear, actionable narrative about health outcomes, patient satisfaction, and areas for improvement.

Once existing records systems are converted to meet FHIR guidelines, providers across the country will be able to access the same data as their peers in mere seconds, fostering collaboration and eliminating knowledge gaps.

Health Beyond Doctor’s Visits

The FHIR standards use specific application programming interfaces (APIs) that extend beyond the doctor’s office. This allows a slew of app developers to access and send information within a basic EHR operating system previously restricted to hospital devices.

App developers will be able to speak a common language as they create applications that measure a person’s daily steps, track their medication regimen, and schedule follow-up appointments through patient portals. These consumer-oriented apps offer people more day-to-day knowledge of their personal health and establish a stronger connection with their busy providers. Furthermore, such apps can customize the user experience based on a person’s EHR. For instance, a person tracking their pregnancy using an FHIR-enabled app may receive suggestions for key vitamins, compression socks, or heating pads.

Don Woodlock, head of global healthcare solutions at InterSystems, explains it this way: “If you have an iPhone in your pocket, you have FHIR in your pocket.”

Encouraging FHIR Implementation

The inclusion of FHIR in the 21st Century Cures Act has drawn increasing interest to the standards. As healthcare providers work to adopt the measures, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) convened “FHIR at Scale Taskforce” (FAST). Since 2017, FAST has identified a number of challenges to FHIR implementation ranging from scalability to security.

The proposed solutions offer hope because there are multiple FHIR applications on the provider’s end and locating all the endpoints can be time-consuming. FAST proposes a national solution for endpoint discovery using FHIR. Similarly, concerns about patient security have prompted FAST to recommend strengthening its authorization and registration requirements.

As the kinks in the system are worked out, FHIR remains a leading light for interoperability efforts in the healthcare field. Within the next decade, the standards may help medical professionals better understand the vast mountains of data at their fingertips and assure patients that their information is both accessible and protected.

Subscribe to DDIntel Here.

Visit our website here: https://www.datadriveninvestor.com

Join our network here: https://datadriveninvestor.com/collaborate