Introduction
FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) is a new standard for exchanging complicated healthcare information and replaces the rigid and complex legacy formats. FHIR was created as a healthcare data standard for the future. FHIR helps implementers to integrate, request, and transfer data in various healthcare systems.
What Caused The Need For FHIR?
Interoperability can be defined as “being in one place and being able to see all those data in the multiple systems for a patient or population in real-time”. Interoperability in healthcare came into the picture when hospitals started having more than one system, which had to be connected to one another for the exchange of healthcare information. Today an average hospital in the United States has over 80 IT systems that need to be interconnected to one another in order to exchange health care information. With increasing complexities and new mutations, there is much more data required to be stored in the system.
According to a study conducted by a university professor, the estimated number of facts that existed per complex decision in healthcare in 1980 was ten facts per decision, whereas, in 2020, there were 1000. Moreover, on average, a human brain can handle only five facts at a time. For more than 20 years, HL7 has been tackling these issues by developing healthcare data interchange and information modeling standards. FHIR is a new standard based on developing industry ideas but guided by years of experience defining and implementing HL7 v2, HL7 v3, and the RIM, and CDA. FHIR is a stand-alone data interchange standard that may and will be used in conjunct
an ion with other widely used protocols.
How Does FHIR Work?
FHIR is a representational state API, a specification for how one system asks another system for data; it searches the server and returns the required data to the user.
FHIR Resources
FHIR Resources have a known location and are discrete sets of data concepts like a patient, the family history, the medication, etc., which are later used by FHIR. Specific information can easily be extracted using filters such as Name, DOB, etc.
FHIR Profiles
These profiles are created for specific use cases and include all of the resources as well as all of the value sets that specify the data in the use case and FHIR Extensions. Interoperability comes from using the same shared profile.
Data expressed as FHIR can be used in the form of messages (to send messages), documents (data in the document is represented by FHIR resources), it can be a rest API, or it can be used in service. The implementation of an application programming interface (API) in healthcare will provide physicians, and patients access to patient data, as well as allow third-party applications to access patient data and improve patient care. Although EHR adoption is increasing across the healthcare industry, providers still face issues with interoperability and patient data sharing. Healthcare can use a technical strategy comparable to that of other businesses, such as finance and tourism. APIs, for example, allow travel firms to compare flights from different airlines without requiring the user to visit each airline’s website. The system’s user interface is specifically designed in a user-friendly manner, ensuring easy access to technical and non-technical people.
FHIR Benefits
Below mentioned are some of the benefits of FHIR: Patient data exchange between providers, as well as patient access to data, and the use of clinical decision support (CDS) tools for antibiotic prescribing. Patients may have access to data through FHIR. It allows patients to track and control their healthcare on their smartphone or computer outside of the doctor’s office. Instead of delivering the entire clinical history, FHIR allows physicians to select the needed or useful patient information to send. (Using resources and profiles.FHIR would also lead to faster and quicker access to the required healthcare data, henceforth avoiding unnecessary delay.
Future of FHIR (API Adoption)
Health IT professionals were interviewed to analyze and evaluate the current and future prospects and uses of API. Their take is stated below:
According to respondents, APIs were most typically used for patient access and CDS. However, some respondents also stated that they had not used APIs for other purposes, such as exchanging patient data. Next, respondents stated that health IT suppliers differ in the data elements that are permitted for patient data interchange. This difference has an influence on the type and amount of patient data that clinicians can share. Many of the terms and conditions provided by providers, EHR suppliers, and third-party app developers were insufficient and lacked essential facts such as fees. As a result, those three groups of people have the power to set costs, which vary. Finally, respondents suggested that facilitating EHR data entry, integrating applications into physician workflow, and providing standardized data pieces might boost API utilization.
Review
FHIR and API adoption in healthcare is the future in the upcoming tech-driven world. Adoption of FHIR would speed up the healthcare fraternity and accelerate untethering of Patient Healthcare; it has the ability to improve healthcare efficiency, improve care coordination, and provide providers and patients with more tools to access information and assure high-quality, efficient, safe, and value-based treatment. However, some hospitals are hesitant to give patients access to data; there is no bidirectional data interchange and pricing structures may be exorbitant.
