Catching FHIR

An area of real promise in the rapid sharing of healthcare data across the spectrum of healthcare for the newly named "eHI" (electronic health information), is the push towards FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) being an industry wide standards for the rapid exportation of eHI housed within various data silos.

Look no further than the Apple Health beta https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208680 as a start to the aggregation party. 500 + networks have joined across the country, and importantly, so have organizations like Quest and Labcorp. While this standard was a de facto industry solution which has emerged over the past few years, recently CMS/HHS/ONC have moved to making this the de jure standard: https://www.healthit.gov/sites/default/files/nprm/ONCCuresActNPRM.pdf.

This is a really important step in the bridge building between all of these disparate sources of health information that a patient is expected to be able to navigate as well as bringing in into a user friendly hub that may already be housing some of their exercise/sleep/wellness information.

In the upcoming weeks I hope to do a deep dive into the various regulatory proposed rules from these federal level controlling agencies which will help shape the information sharing landscape as we transition into the 2020s. Until then, try out the Apple app if you have an iPhone. If not, i'll post some other apps that work in similar ways later this week.