Better care coordination

With access to data, clinicians have an easier time accessing a patient’s most important health information, which can lead to fewer repeat tests, prevent inadvertent treatment interactions and reduce miscommunications.

Higher performance

When data can be combined more easily, it can also be analyzed more easily. Interoperability makes it possible for organizations to study data trends, past performance and make data-driven improvements in patient care and other areas.

Better experiences

Data interoperability can reduce the amount of redundant administrative work both within and outside organizations, creating a more satisfying experiences both for employees and for those they serve.

What is FHIR?

Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources, also known as FHIR, is an open source standards framework for healthcare data that builds off of a previous standards framework called HL7. FHIR was created to make it easier for healthcare data to move from one system to another.

FHIR organizes data into resources like patient, conditions, medications and provides a standardized structure for how that data is organized and interpreted by different computer systems or applications. FHIR can also be used to structure financial data and workflow data, such as claims information, appointments and more.

Many major healthcare systems in United States have already adopted FHIR in their health IT practices. Medicare’s Blue Button 2.0 initiative is based on FHIR and the Veteran’s Affairs Administration has developed a FHIR platform called Lighthouse. Both provide platforms for patient access to healthcare information through FHIR.

The National Coordinator for Health IT in the United States has made FHIR a key part of the nationwide interoperability roadmap (PDF, 3.5 MB). New government regulations and interoperability rules are requiring wider adoption of FHIR, so it’s vital for healthcare organizations, especially for ones that receive payments for Medicare or Medicaid services, to understand FHIR and incorporate it into their interoperability strategies.