H08: FHIR, Interoperability in Healthcare IT, Plain & Simple

The ability for Healthcare IT systems to communicate with one another in a meaningful way (interoperability) has been an issue for decades in healthcare.   Initially, standards were designed to connect large Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems, most of which were designed  to address the insurance and billing needs of patients and hospitals.    These EMR systems have had limited success for providing patients and clinicians the integrated view of healthcare information they need to make accurate diagnoses and treatment decisions. 

Until now... The birth of search engine technology,  distributed web based systems and the diffusion of mobile healthcare devices into our everyday lives has made it possible for a much more mature, complete integration of not just our patient records but everything related to our healthcare needs.  Ideally we, as patients and clinicians who treat us, would like to ask a healthcare question and have the various healthcare electronic systems  "serve up" all the data and information related to that clinical question and eventually, through Artificial Intelligence (AI) suggest some diagnoses and treatments.

This is the promise of the new FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) Standard.

The topics covered in this "Class on FHIR" course are:

• The Issue with our current method of connecting Healthcare IT systems

• The MPI (Master Patient Index) Issue

• The document based approach of current EMR systems

• What we really want and need

• The enabling technologies (Web, Search , Mobile devices)

• What is an API  (Application Programming Interface)?

• FHIR and API

• How FHIR can make everything better.

This "PLAIN AND SIMPLE" series on Healthcare Information Systems strives to introduce the basic concepts of information technology and systems in a very simple and easy to understand format using many examples from both non healthcare and healthcare environments. This course is targeted at the Basic / Intermediate Level learner.

The content of the series is based on the author's 35 years experience in the healthcare information systems business. This experience spans product design and launch, marketing, business development and executive management (including president). In addition, it is based on 15 years teaching at the graduate level in the University environment.