Relevance of FHIR to patients and providers in the digital healthcare mission

As health data interoperability becomes an increasingly pressing concern for providers, developers and vendors are paying a great deal more attention to the data standards that will enable seamless, on-demand information exchange.

The Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resource (FHIR), pronounced ‘Fire’, is becoming a popular protocol for connecting different systems. It holds great promise to develop an application-based approach to interoperability and health information exchange.

FHIR can make healthcare similar to an internet-based experience that we commonly witness in the consumer world. Similar to how the URL viewed on the browser on your laptop can also be considered on your mobile phone. FHIR has the potential to be the missing link between Electronic Health Records and wearable devices/monitoring scales. Data from these devices are growing every day, but it isn't significant if doctors cannot read the data and put things into a clinical perspective. FHIR would provide data to the doctor to make it valuable and actionable to them. Apps can help with the patient's health data analytics and present users with a relevant summary.

Patients who see multiple providers in different health systems might no longer worry about having three or four patient portals from organisations using other EHRs. One personal health record, which integrates data from different systems to provide a comprehensive view of all medications, problems, and allergies, could link disparate system formats to improve care coordination.

Providers may be able to customise their toolsets to meet the needs of their speciality or area of interest, pulling data from different research sources to bolster their clinical decision support capabilities or allowing them to send de-identified information to research registries.

With advances in artificial intelligence and big data technology, recent years have shown a trend for data to become the most critical resource. Health data, in particular, may be invaluable. Numerous research and development efforts to utilise health data are being actively conducted. Interoperability is an essential element in applying cutting-edge technologies to health data. It is also necessary for patient- or consumer-oriented health services to ensure uniform access to health records. FHIR is the key here.