There has been an increasing level of concern around health data interoperability. This means that there is a lot more attention on data standards in a world of information exchanges that occur on demand. This is where the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resource (FHIR) comes in. Since its inception, it has become among the most popular protocols for interoperability and exchanging health data. You can learn more about FHIR standards and how this protocol is used today.
Understanding FHIR
FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resource) is a standard for draft data that was both developed and maintained by HL7 International. This was a standard that was explicitly created with how complex healthcare data can be while using the latest technology and internet-based techniques to connect the various distinct element of healthcare data. The concept of FHIR is based on using a set of resources that can work with a significant amount of common use cases, either individually or when used when combine with other resources.
The hope with FHIR is that it can help the developers create a standardized application of browsers that is similar to when you visit a website on any other type of browser, like when you search for something on Amazon. The goal is to get a coherent amount of healthcare information that allows providers and patients to exchange this data. This is important especially when you are managing your care across various teams. You want to make sure that everyone on your healthcare team can access the necessary data to give you the best care possible. With concerns about data these days, finding the most secure way to share this data is essential.
How does FHIR Differ from Other Interoperability Standards?
What makes FHIR stand out as one of the best options for interoperability standards? Today, a lot of the exchange of healthcare data is handled through documents, whether these are physically or electronically exchanged between providers. The problem with the approach that is used today is that it can be very limiting. You can communicate well, but it won’t adequately serve your purposes when it comes to data analytics, making healthcare decisions, and creating meaningful coordination for patient care.
The current standard of C-CDA does offer a great deal of information that can be essential for providers, but it’s a very static file that requires you to put a lot of effort into extracting the information that has been provided and making it so that it can be used in other formats. The fact is that having easy access to complete information is essential for making the right medical decisions for patients. Medical providers need more information than just lab work or the medications that the patient is currently taking. They need a whole host of information that will give providers the full story of each patient.
How It’s Being Used and What It Means for Patients/Providers
Providers and vendors have worked hard to create data standards that can work to provide quality care to patients. By using the standard provided by FHIR, providers get an almost limitless use case, which helps them overcome many of the serious challenges that healthcare providers face when improving their practice. They want to increase the engagement of patients as well as get the clinical support that they need for effective decision-making. FHIR is getting noticed by some of the biggest organizations to improve how things are done in the healthcare industry. Some major names in this industry have used this protocol to create applications for specific specialties that can better break down the data siloes or increase their health management capabilities for the population. Other prominent names in the industry use FHIR as a way to create a better clinical decision support model, which is focused on real-time data access that providers can use at the point of care.
The fact is that providers across the industry are making use of the great things that FHIR offers them.
But what does this mean exactly for both the providers and the patients? The biggest thing that both of these groups can get from FHIR is that they get the internet-based experience that the consumer can benefit from across various other industries. This is great for patients because it can take advantage of the Internet of Things, which context the patients directly with their providers. Wearables and other monitoring devices can be used for clinical purposes.
This means that those Fitbit devices, blood glucose monitors, and other wearables that people flock to become healthier can be used to generate healthcare data that your providers can use. The provider can get meaningful data, which can be used to create a treatment plan that works for the patient. This can be especially helpful to those patients who have an entire medical team as a result of different ailments that they may have. With multiple providers in a single portal, every provider gets the complete medical picture of the patient, which helps them work together to create more effective plans for treatment.
FHIR is a protocol that can completely transform how a patient is treated. Whether they have a single provider or multiple providers, they can benefit from their medical records having the complete data that a provider or providers will need to offer complete care for the patients.
Conclusion
Wi4 has offerings that can help make FHIR standards a possibility for your healthcare practice. Sharing data amongst your healthcare team is essential to make sure that your patients get the quality healthcare that you deserve. With Wi4, you can get the applications that your practice needs to provide the quality care that your patients are looking for while also ensuring that their information is protected. Coordinating with other healthcare providers, including those who aren’t at your practice, can be very difficult if you don’t have the right applications or programs to share this data.
Check out our offerings to see how our team can help create the applications that you need.
