Health Intersections

SEPTEMBER 4, 2018

On a forum for FHIR Foundation members, I raised the subject of where FHIR is on the Gartner Hype Cycle (see Gartner write up , or Wikipedia ). FHIR Foundation member Wes Rishel ( @wrishel ), who’s a FHIR user, and also was a Gartner Analyst before he retired, graciously made this contribution that I could post here.

FHIR 79

FHIR EHR Interoperability Health IT 79

HAY on FHIR

MAY 10, 2019

I had an email from a company which had a number of really good questions about exposing data through FHIR, so I thought I’d write a post about it rather than just replying directly as it may be of interest to others (and also gives others the opportunity to disagree with me ). The text might also be to a different level of detail.

FHIR 84

FHIR 84

HAY on FHIR

MAY 22, 2021

This will be the first post in a short series that considers a very useful interaction – accessing Laboratory data such as blood tests from a repository of data via (of course) a FHIR API. There are 2 core resources, and a number of supporting ones.

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FHIR EHR 110

HAY on FHIR

MAY 8, 2019

At the recent Working Group Meeting in Montreal, I participated in the ‘v2 to FHIR’ stream – focused on how can the HL7 community give advice to implementers about converting v2 messages into FHIR bundles. To actually process (convert to FHIR) a message, click the ‘Convert’ button to the upper right.

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FHIR 69

HAY on FHIR

JANUARY 6, 2019

As FHIR continues to mature, one of the things we’re seeing is a move away from ‘simple’ data representation Implementation Guides to more complex ones that describe a workflow of some sort. To test this out, I chose a simple use case that uses FHIR notifications to let relatives know when a person is admitted to hospital.

FHIR 73

FHIR 73

HAY on FHIR

JANUARY 23, 2020

The 23 rd FHIR connectathon in Sydney is almost upon us, and despite the trials and tribulations that the weather has thrown at us, it’s going to be a great event with over 150 people currently scheduled to attend. For myself, I’m going to participate in the FHIR shorthand track. In keeping with the FHIR ethos, the Mitre corp.

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FHIR Primary Care 123

HAY on FHIR

FEBRUARY 17, 2023

So I’ve written an earlier post describing how you can use the excellent HAPI FHIR engine to host your own FHIR server. Of course, you can create your own – or extend the publicly available containers, but the registry makes it trivial to deploy containerized apps (as they are called).

FHIR 68

FHIR 68

HAY on FHIR

MAY 26, 2021

And, of course, you could document this in an Implementation Guide with the appropriate profiles. And finally it was also pointed out that the ConceptMap resource is undergoing significant revision in the next FHIR release (version 5) that will introduce breaking changes. If it’s omitted, then “0” is assumed….

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FHIR 63

Healthcare IT News - Telehealth

MARCH 16, 2022

Microsoft took a step to address health data interoperability with Azure API for FHIR in 2019. Patient Unified Health Scoring also provides actionable insights that can help identify potential risks the patients may face and help inform the next-best course of action for that patient.

Life Science 216

Life Science Interoperability FHIR Health Data 216

Health Intersections

JUNE 5, 2024

This years theme is Bringing FHIR into production everywhere! With a serving of AI, of course, because it is 2024, after all. DevDays is my favourite meeting, though unfortunately I don’t get to go this year (though I’m still doing the closing session remotely).

FHIR 44

FHIR 44

HAY on FHIR

SEPTEMBER 24, 2017

As you probably know, there are a number of ‘conformance’ resources in FHIR that have a unique ‘canonical’ Url that identifies them globally. So how do you accomplish this across different versions of FHIR? So back to FHIR versions. Before we get into that, let’s just address that comment about the ‘major version’.

FHIR 49

FHIR 49

HAY on FHIR

JANUARY 6, 2019

In part one of this series, we looked at using node-RED to manage notifications using the FHIR Subscription resource for a Use Case where relatives (or other care givers) could be notified when a person is admitted to hospital. This node makes the actual call (a POST) to the FHIR server and validates the resource. User Interface.

FHIR 49

FHIR 49

Redox

MARCH 29, 2024

In the first post, I covered how Redox is overcoming current limitations with bulk FHIR. This time, I’ll be discussing our capabilities to translate between HL7 ® v2 and HL7 ® FHIR ® —a reoccurring challenge for many of our customers. However, modern technology shops want everything in FHIR. Let’s dive in. What does HL7 v2 do?

FHIR 59

FHIR Interoperability EHR Digital Health 59

Health Intersections

MARCH 20, 2020

So most of HL7s volunteers are off, urgently making use of their existing infrastructure, or building new solutions in zero time using the standards we’ve already developed – we’ve been building the infrastructure a long time.

FHIR 56

FHIR Health Data 56

HAY on FHIR

APRIL 5, 2021

To the right of that list is a compressed view of what they should have received – derived from the plan of course Below the Immunization list is the result of the disease analysis described above. You’d want some way to allow the user to set the dates due as well of course. And finally, a list of the API calls needed for this.

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FHIR Nursing 71

Healthcare IT Today

NOVEMBER 10, 2023

Of course that finish line has moved substantially forward. The adoption of FHIR-based standards in Ontario is a notable development. We have achieved all of our wildest dreams from 15 to 20 years ago when we first set down the path of interoperability. We have a long way to go.”

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Interoperability EMR FHIR Healthcare IT 126

Healthcare IT Today

JUNE 16, 2023

There have been public statements from ONC and to extent from the Sequoia Project that TEFCA will be modernized to computable data – i.e. FHIR data. FHIR has been around for over 10 years so it is worth pondering why it was not incorporated into TEFCA from the start. Of course, the big question is, what is the public benefit?

FHIR 119

FHIR EHR Interoperability Health Information 119

HAY on FHIR

JANUARY 25, 2024

At the FHIR Connectathon last week I participated in the Questionnaire track and spent most of my time there using – and integration with – the fhirpath lab questionnaire tester tool maintained by Brian Postlethwaite – one of the foundation members of the FHIR community.

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FHIR 98

Healthcare IT Today

AUGUST 30, 2022

At that time, the chats were inspired by advancements in interoperability, including some rather niche healthcare standards discussions, including HL7 v2, HL7 v3, CDA, and eventually FHIR. Of course, if you’re searching for the latest #HITsm chat, you can always find the latest on the #HITsm chat here. Upcoming #HITsm Chat Schedule.

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Interoperability FHIR Health IT Health Data 132

HAY on FHIR

DECEMBER 13, 2019

So I’ve just been at the FHIR devdays in Amsterdam which was really interesting (of course – attending a devdays is a ‘must do if possible’ for FHIR implementers). Note also that I’m using the term ’message’ to indicate the input and output – not a Message in the FHIR sense. Create the mapping file (aka ‘map’).

FHIR 84

FHIR 84

HAY on FHIR

MAY 24, 2021

Before we start thinking of the specifics of coding in lab tests, a quick review of coded data in FHIR in general is probably a good idea. This is a common pattern in the FHIR core spec. Looking back at the spec, we see that Observation.code is bound to the LOINC code system with an example binding.

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FHIR Interoperability 58

HAY on FHIR

MARCH 24, 2019

Suppose you have a csv file of data, and you want to load that into a FHIR server. There are a number of ways that you could do that – depending on the nature of the csv file and the capabilities of the FHIR server that you want to update. We could consider the use of a FHIR library – like FHIR.js SNOMED code.

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FHIR 45

Healthcare IT Today

JUNE 14, 2023

“If #TEFCA is going to invite people in and achieve critical mass, of course we are going to do it.” – Matthew Doyle, Epic on why they decided to join TEFCA. HIMSS23 #HITsm #healthit @CommonWell pic.twitter.com/yLIq8NBs9m — Healthcare IT Today (@hcittoday) April 18, 2023 FHIR APIs are wonderful, but they’re not sufficient on their own.

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Interoperability FHIR Healthcare IT Health Data 135

HAY on FHIR

MARCH 14, 2019

There’s an extra performance overhead of course – but that’s acceptable to us in this case. Obviously, the call to the Authorization server must be secure, but it does have the advantage that we don’t need to manage keys and the whole decryption process. So let’s implement that. It’s actually quite simple.

FHIR 59

FHIR 59

HAY on FHIR

APRIL 11, 2021

I’ve been asked to give a short talk about clinFHIR to a course at Johns Hopkins this month – what it is and what you’d use it for, so to organize my thoughts I decided to write a ‘stock take’ of clinFHIR modules. The idea for clinFHIR started shortly after FHIR started to gain prominence within HL7 – coming up to 10 years ago now.

FHIR 68

FHIR Primary Care 68

HAY on FHIR

APRIL 30, 2020

As readers will know, I’m a big fan of FHIR Shorthand as a way of making it much easier to create Implementation Guides and examples in conjunction with the IG publisher. Suppose you are hosting a FHIR API that can create or update Patient resources and you want to say: All patients must include their medical records number (MRN).

FHIR 79

FHIR 79

HAY on FHIR

OCTOBER 3, 2021

One of the things I find myself doing quite often is helping people design FHIR API interfaces. What I find very useful is to create a small set of sample data and save to a generic FHIR server (I use the HAPI server generally, though there are others available these days). Save the resources to the FHIR server.

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FHIR 82

HAY on FHIR

NOVEMBER 7, 2021

I’m going to be doing a number of things over the course of the event (a couple of days) – and the days leading up to it. This should be of value to servers implementing an IPS endpoint as well as useful to FHIR beginners as it has a number of useful visualizations. IG’s are the ‘next big thing’ for FHIR.

FHIR 58

FHIR Interoperability EHR 58

HAY on FHIR

MAY 30, 2018

Enter the world of a standardized API – which is what FHIR specifies. The FHIR specification defines how to search for things in general, and the types of search for each resource in particular – here’s the ones for a Patient. Indeed, this is what allows clinFHIR to select any compliant FHIR server to display patient data from.

FHIR 63

FHIR 63

Health Intersections

MARCH 29, 2020

Other people contributed – in fact, dropped everything to contribute, all in their own time: Brett Esler gave us free use of his FHIR GP Access library to access the appointment diary for Best Practice, Medical Director, and ZedMed and then worked to improve it for us. In fact, I only did a fraction of the work.

FHIR 108

FHIR Telehealth 108

Healthcare Exchange Standards

NOVEMBER 30, 2016

The same question came to me regarding FHIR and http REST. There are two trading partners that have an agreement (Trust Framework) that one will be asking questions using FHIR http REST interfaces of the other party. Conclusion As easy as http REST is, aka FHIR, it is very hard to get security right. Using OAuth is better?

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FHIR 40

Health Populi

FEBRUARY 9, 2019

A few of my favorite comments were: “Jim Cramer needs a crash course in FHIR standards” from the wonkier section of peanut gallery. Cramer’s pronouncement led to a tweetstorm where hundreds of tweeters in and outside of health/care talked back and with Cramer. Where is the iPhone listed on Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs?”

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Health IT EHR HIPAA RCM 211

HAY on FHIR

JANUARY 13, 2019

The approach I’m taking is to use a ‘vanilla’ FHIR server ( HAPI ) as the actual data repository, with a layer in front of it to manage any specific business functionality I need. This makes sense, as I only want to do this once (after debugging of course) – it’s an administrator function. So that’s enough for the moment.

FHIR 64

FHIR 64

HAY on FHIR

AUGUST 17, 2020

It helps significantly with the FHIR design. Assuming that the app actually communicates with a FHIR back end (which can be one of the freely available reference servers such as HAPI ), then it validates the resource design (which resources are needed and their profiling) as well as the API’s that are going to be needed.

FHIR 63

FHIR 63

HAY on FHIR

AUGUST 12, 2019

I mentioned in that post that we didn’t really take a close look at PATCH updates – but a couple of days ago I saw this trail in the FHIR chat which is about a similar project (slightly different requirements) and thought I really should take a closer look at PATCH. Let’s see how that can work (the details are in the FHIR spec of course).

FHIR 61

FHIR 61

HAY on FHIR

MAY 16, 2018

In June this year, there will be the first FHIR DevDays in the United States – in Boston. In fact, last year I attended FHIR DevDays in Amsterdam to guide the clinical track. We talked about using FHIR in clinical scenarios and how tools like clinFHIR support designing the datamodels for these scenarios.

FHIR 40

FHIR 40

HAY on FHIR

APRIL 28, 2018

Basically, it’s just a hierarchical model of data – much like you see in any of the core FHIR resource types – with the exception that the model does not have to align with any of the core types. Note that these model types are particular to clinFHIR – they are not ‘official’ FHIR terms. This step does require FHIR knowledge.

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FHIR 45