Stay on top of changing information exchange standards when adopting IT to keep your organization competitive.
David Hay, product strategist for Orion Health in Scottsdale, Ariz.: There is a lot of excitement in the industry surrounding FHIR, fast healthcare interoperability resources, a new interoperability data exchange standard being advocated by the HL7 organization. Supporters of the new standard claim that it combines the best of HL7's Version 2 [and] Version 3 [product suites], [Reference Information Model] and [Clinical Document Architecture] standards with the latest in web standards in a way that can co-exist with an organization's current standards and is easy to implement.
The ability to exchange information between systems in a timely and secure manner has always been important. However, as the volume of health-related information increases, effective health information exchange is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve, yet even more crucial to improved, coordinated, safe care delivery. The goal of FHIR is to make it easier to exchange healthcare data between various systems in a straightforward, yet secure manner.
In order to remain on the cutting edge of health information exchange and to ensure your physicians have access to up-to-date information to provide the best quality care, I'd recommend organizations implement FHIR as a secure messaging standard and/or partner with vendors that are committed to supporting and staying up to date with this standard.
For more information about FHIR, visit this website.