What Is FHIR and What Are Its Benefits?

FHIR was developed by Health Level Seven International (better known as HL7) as a solution for the growing digitization in the healthcare industry. It offers many improvements over the standards that already exist.

If you want to know everything about this topic, you can check out this guide by Prolifics on FHIR. On the other hand, for a general understanding of what FHIR is and its benefits, the article that follows is the right resource.

What is FHIR and how does it work?

 

 

FHIR stands for Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources and it is an interoperability specification for the exchange of healthcare information electronically. It is a standard that is used for electronic healthcare data and information exchange.

FHIR aims to simplify how information is implemented without sacrificing its integrity. It can be used in conjunction with already existing standards and also as a stand-alone data exchange standard.

According to HL7, in order to accomplish this goal, it leverages existing logical and theoretical models to provide a consistent, easy to implement, and rigorous mechanism for exchanging data between healthcare applications.

It was designed for the internet and built upon the concept of resources. These resources lead to content that can be exchanged in any form and used as building blocks in the system.

Resources are any type of interchangeable content that is based on JSON, XML, Atom, HTTP, or OAuth structure.

They include:

• Common definition and method of representation
• Human-readable part
• A common set of metadata

The aim of FHIR is to create a framework that can extend resources but also adapt them so it can be interpreted by any system, regardless of how it was developed. This means that it can be used in mobile applications, EHRs, cloud communications, and more.

The requirement to have patient records on hand and always be accessible has always been there, but it was very hard to achieve. With FHIR, not only will all of this information be readily available, but it will also be in an understandable format.

Benefits of FHIR

 

The reason why FHIR is such an improvement of existing standards lies in the fact that if data is used correctly, it will lead to a practically perfect healthcare system. Let’s take a look at all the data-related benefits FHIR offers.

Better data sharing

Good data sharing is of great importance in healthcare for the following reasons:

• Patients can take better ownership of their care. If people have access to their own medical data, they can take control of their health and make decisions based on that data. These decisions can include things such as what diets they need to follow and the type of exercise that suits them best.
• Better collaboration between payers and providers. A value-based reimbursement model in the health industry depends on data sharing between payers and providers. This leads to better coordination of prevention and care as well as better management of conditions.
• Clinical research can provide better treatments. When clinical researchers have access to good patient-oriented and patient-originated data, they can use it to significantly improve and speed up their research.

Better Data Management

The healthcare system is driven by very important data, but there are usually a lot of issues with that data. It comes in many different formats and from various sources. There are also different volumes and frequencies in data exchange, so it’s easy to see why this system is faulty.

With FHIR, this issue is resolved because all of the information in it comes in a standard common target data format. This common format transforms information into a usable form and ensures data accuracy, integrity, and consistency. It also minimizes redundant data and clarifies any ambiguous meanings. 

All of this makes it easy to create a data catalog that will track information such as who the data owner is, who is allowed to use that data and for what purposes.

Better Data Mining

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are advancing at an impressive rate, and they can use FHIR significantly to provide real-life benefits for patients and doctors. For this to be possible, the AI/machine learning models need to have:

• High-quality data with excellent coverage
• A sufficient quantity of data, as it’s good to have as much data as possible. When AI can work with gigabytes and terabytes instead of megabytes, it can make more reliable predictions.
• Data that is properly formatted, labeled, and has a consistent meaning

With the right data, you can train AI to diagnose conditions, recommend the most effective healthcare procedures, and detect if healthcare resources are being misused.

Why you need to implement FHIR

 

 

The benefits we just discussed are all data-related, but those are not the only benefits FHIR has to offer. While improving patient care is the number one reason why your business needs this solution, there are many more aspects that will motivate you to implement FHIR as soon as possible.

They include:

• FHIR is very developer-friendly. As we already mentioned, FHIR needs to be based on JSON, XML, Atom, HTTP, or OAuth structure. All modern web developers are already familiar with these technologies and won’t have any issues working with them.
• It’s free for use. Even though HL7 was founded back in 1987, their standards became freely available very recently, in 2013. However, specifications for FHIR are already completely available, free for use, and don’t have any restrictions or login requirements.
• Easy implementation. Developers can have the HL7 interface running in just one day because it’s very simple and easy to understand. If you have a good integration engine, the whole process can be even faster.
• Vendor neutrality. As data sharing in healthcare is very important and we should all strive to simplify it as much as possible, multiple vendors have agreed to participate in the Argonaut project. This initiative will lead to multiple apps that run on SMART on FHIR, all of which can be plugged-in to EHRs.
• FHIR is suited for mobile devices. Technologies that FHIR utilizes such as HTTP, REST, and JSON, are already supported by mobile devices. This can lead to a significant increase in a variety of mobile health apps and devices.

Final Thoughts

Technological advancements have made the lives and jobs of millions of people all over the world much simpler. While some advancements are more important than others, it’s obvious why FHIR stands out as something that’s not only useful but also extremely beneficial.

Not only does it provide various data-related benefits that can directly influence the quality of healthcare, but it’s also incredibly easy to implement into any clinic.