In this blog, we will show how to use the Power BI FHIR connector to connect Power BI to a FHIR server and create Power BI dashboard. Power BI FHIR Dashboards are built using Power BI connector for FHIR with focus on Patient, Clinical and Claims resources of FHIR.
Patients – Patient demographic distribution, patient encounters, patient LOS and related information
Clinical – Active and resolved conditions, distribution of patients to conditions, distribution of observation category to encounters etc.
Claims – Distribution of claims value to Insurer, to city, by age, by claim type etc.
Open Power BI Desktop
Click on Get data
In the Get Data window, type and search ‘FHIR’. Select ‘FHIR’ shown under ‘All’ and click Connect at the bottom.
Another window will open. Enter the following URL – ‘https://r4.smarthealthit.org/’, which has data related to FHIR entities. Click OK.
If asked for authentication, make sure ‘Anonymous’ is selected and then click ‘Connect’. On successful connection, a ‘Navigator’ window will come up.
Select required tables from the list of tables on the left and Click ‘Transform Data’
Power Query Editor Window will open. Here we have to do all the cleaning up (expanding hierarchy, renaming columns etc) of data.
Click on ‘Close & Apply’. Another window will pop up showing data load for all the tables
In the report tab, under ‘Field’, all the tables loaded and transformed will be listed.
Click on Model tab, create relationship between tables using the ‘drag and connect’ feature for related columns.
Once the relationship among all the table are defined, next step is to create required visuals for each report.
Click Publish to Publish the report to the desired workspace.
Once published to desired workspace, report is available for users to explore in Power BI Service
At the recently concluded virtual Build conference, Microsoft announced the launch of Cloud for Healthcare. This vertical industry-specific cloud offering from the technology giant is now available in public preview and as a free six-month trial. Microsoft expects to roll out the Cloud for Healthcare for general availability starting in the fourth calendar quarter of 2020.
The Cloud for Healthcare brings trusted and integrated capabilities together for healthcare organizations to improve their collaboration, decision making and operational efficiency. This will help healthcare organizations to better engage in a more proactive manner with their patients. It also allows caregivers to deliver effective care and actionable results with better streamlined workflows and interactions.
The Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare will bring together Azure, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365 and Power Platform with a common data model that makes it easier to share data between applications and analyze the data; built on a foundation of security and compliance. This helps to deliver better experiences, better insights and better care.
Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft
Check out this opening remarks video by Satya Nadella on the Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare
Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare brings together both existing and future capabilities of the Microsoft Cloud ecosystem. In addition, the offer delivers rich data analytics for both structured and unstructured data that enable customers turn insights into action. The offering aims to bring together the following capabilities for customers and partners to enrich patient engagement and improve operational efficiencies –
Enhance patient engagement
Empower health team collaboration
Improve operational and clinical data insights
Enhance Patient Engagement
Healthcare organizations can better engage with their patients in more proactive ways by extending the value offered by Microsoft Dynamics 365. Healthcare providers can create care plans that are customized for patients, or groups of patients. In addition, they can make relevant content and proactive outreach to patients on specific devices when the patients need it.
Microsoft’s Healthcare Bot Service has been delivering assistance to healthcare providers to build COVID-19 self assessment tools. There have been over 1,600 instances of COVID-19 bots that have gone live since March. This service has impacted more than 31 million people across 23 countries. These self assessment bots have been very useful as it addresses the most common questions faced by users and reduces the stress on the hospital emergency hotlines.
The Cloud for Healthcare offering also gives the benefit to physicians and care teams to build enhanced patient engagement portals. Both patients and providers can interact with each other through the portal and perform the common tasks like appointment booking, setting up reminders, bill payments, virtual patient follow-ups through surveys and assessments etc. There are similar portals that already exist, but this will give a better seamless experience for the provider in terms of connectivity and adaptability to other areas of the care infrastructure.
Physicians and care teams can also create referrals, search for other providers, and understand physician spend, satisfaction, and enhanced analytics on referral categories through different patient outreach approaches. Providers can use Microsoft Power Platform to generate secure, scalable data from medical devices for care teams to continuously monitor patients. With real-time patient insights, care teams can provide timely, personalized, predictive care.
Empower Health Team Collaboration
Cloud for Healthcare offering will help healthcare teams to collaborate, coordinate care, and generate insights that will improve the patient outcomes and team performance. Better collaboration results in faster decisions and improved care.
Microsoft has been investing in building capabilities on Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams that will provide a secure platform for connected care coordination. The Microsoft Teams Patients app integrates with electronic health record (EHR) systems using a Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) interface to bring valuable medical information into Microsoft Teams.
The COVID-19 has put a lot of stress on the healthcare staff and frontline workers. It’s important to realize the fact that clinicians also need greater flexibility and convenience in how they are able to connect with patients. To tackle this situation, Microsoft announced the general availability of the Bookings app in Teams that enables healthcare providers to schedule, manage, and conduct provider-to-patient virtual visits within Microsoft Teams. The Bookings app will send patients an email of their appointment schedule. Patients can join their virtual appointment in a single click from their computer or mobile phone (both iOS and Android).
Improve clinical and operational data insights
The present pandemic situation around the world has forced healthcare organizations and clinical providers to create apps and workflows in just hours instead of days/months. These apps and workflows provide valuable data and insights in real-time. As a result, providers can deliver individualized care plans for patients.
Cloud for Healthcare will offer first-class interoperability between Microsoft Teams and Power Apps to build automated workflows. Many organizations organizations are now relying on these new interoperability solutions to manage their coronavirus response to patients.
Cloud on Healthcare – Built on Interoperability, Trust and Security
Organizations are already taking advantage of capabilities such as FHIR to organize and collaborate with the health data within the cloud. This gives healthcare organizations the freedom to perform remote work and deliver care to patients without having to physically interact with patients. Healthcare providers can take advantage of the generally available Azure FHIR Service that allows them to ingest and persist the data in FHIR format. Providers who have already been taking advantage of FHIR on Azure have been able to collaborate effectively with their patients and deliver better care.
Overall, Microsoft is looking to improve the healthcare infrastructure by taking advantage of different aspects of the Cloud technology. This is the first amongst a set of cloud offerings that is planned for specific industry verticals.
How VNB Health can help you?
VNB Health has 15 years of experience providing healthcare interoperability and care coordination services using Microsoft platform. As a Certified Microsoft Healthcare Cloud Partner, we can help you build healthcare solutions using Microsoft cloud technologies. We can help you build customized Apps for healthcare using Power Apps and Clinical, Administration or Financial analytics using Power BI.
Contact us today for a free consultation of your current environment and have a discussion with one of our expert FHIR Apps consultants.
A situation like COVID-19 where the hospitals are challenged to manage supplies and make decisions as they meet an increase in number of patients, Microsoft Power Platform template for Emergency Response Solution became a very efficient help. VNB Power Platform team has been an early adopter of this solution and have implemented it for many customers. In this article we walk you through the various capabilities and features of the solution and how it enables informed decision making resulting in efficient deployment and usage of resources.
The solution provides a set of capabilities for healthcare organizations to collect data for situational awareness of available beds and supplies, COVID-19 related patients, staffing, and pending discharges.
Features
Some of the salient features of Emergency Response solution app by VNB Health are as follows:
It is easily deployable for healthcare providers and hospitals powered by Microsoft Power Platform.
One can track and gain visibility of the resources over critical ones such as scarcity of supplies like ventilators and masks or availability of beds.
Frontline workers can collect information via mobile phones
It provides a great decision support system for emergency managers
Enables decision making in real time when it is critical to divert scarce resources.
Key Components
The key components of our Emergency response solution involve the following:
Web App – A center for Administration and Configuration
Mobile app – For Frontline staff (RNs)
Dashboard – For Healthcare decision makers
Web App
In Web App, we use the admin app (model-driven app) to add and manage master data for the solution and use the Power BI dashboard to view key insights and metrics. Here,
Hospitals/System admins can define hospital locations, supplies and equipment and other system data.
Admin + Configuration Center App enables Admins define hospital locations, supplies, and equipment.
Enabler for RNs to quickly report to changing conditions.
Admin + Configuration Center enables Emergency Managers to monitor the real time updated dashboards.
Mobile app
With Emergency Response mobile app, RNs can log and view data for current staff and equipment, supplies, staffing needs, stats and discharge planning and COVID-19 related patients.
The following are the capabilities of the mobile app:
Reporting the current status of RN staff and equipment in use.
Tracking supplies on hand on each floor or area of the hospital as well as the rate at which they’re being used.
Making requests for additional personnel by department, role, and urgency.
Reporting counts of those who are positive for COVID-19.
Discharge planning for recovered patients.
Decision Support Dashboard
The solution provides dashboard powered by Microsoft Power BI as well which summarizes key data and insights to make quick and informed decisions in order to achieve efficient deployment and usage of resources.
With this dashboard one can,
Share Data with regional and national systems and easy integration.
Use dashboards to quickly view important data and metrics that will help in efficient decision making.
We can cross filter the data for COVID locations, facilities, regions and hospital systems.
The below report has information by location such as total available beds, acute care beds available, and occupancy percentage.
This below report provides information about the COVID patients at each location, patient trend over time and number of patients found positive and get a sense of where the patients are located within the hospital.
Key Aspects of the Interoperability & Patient Access Final Rule
The Final CMS Interoperability Regulation focuses on a “Patient First” objective. The rule puts a stress on making patient health information easily accessible when in need. The rule also aims to drive more interoperability and data exchange across the entire healthcare ecosystem.
With this new Final CMS Interoperability Regulation, patients can get better access to their health information. They can always be informed of better care and better outcomes. The improved levels of interoperability between payers, providers and patients; and the data being readily available; the CMS aims to achieve better care, improved health outcomes and reduced costs of treatment.
The Final CMS Interoperability Regulation proposes 7 policies that will take the healthcare system forward to achieve higher levels of interoperability. These policies have certain levels of impact on payers and providers with strict timelines.
CMS Payer Policies
There are 4 new policies for both Medicare and Medicaid payer organizations; along with some implications for the providers.
Policy
Policy Details
Additional Information
Compliance Date
Patient Access Through APIs
CMS regulated Payers should make Claims and Encounter Data readily available to patients through the use of a secure, standards based (HL7 FHIR Release 4.0.1) API. This API should meet the HHS standards that are established by ONC 21st Century Cures Act final rule.
The API should make available the following details –Adjudicated claims, remittances, cost share, encounter details along with clinical data, lab results, preferred drug list, and so on. Patients can access this information through any third-party application and integrate it to their EHR
January 1, 2021. According to the latest update (on April 21, 2020), CMS will not enforce this requirement until July 1, 2021.
API access to published provider directory data
CMS regulated Payers should make provider directory information publicly available through a FHIR-based Provider Directory API.
The API should provide the following details – names of providers, addresses, phone numbers and specialty.
January 1, 2021. According to the latest update (on April 21, 2020), CMS will not enforce this requirement until July 1, 2021.
Payer-to-Payer Data Exchange
CMS regulated Payers should exchange patient’s clinical data upon the patient’s request as they move from payer to payer to help create a cumulative health record with their current payer.
At a minimum, the data elements specified in United States Core Data for Interoperability (USCDI) v1 should be made available to the patients. Moreover, patients now have a cover of 5 years after the end of their coverage term to submit a request to a payer to share their information.
January 1, 2022 (no changes to this date)
Increased Frequency of federal-state data exchanges for dual eligible members
All the states should submit the Medicare and Medicaid enrollment information to CMS daily. Previously, it used to be weekly / monthly.
April 1, 2022 (no changes to this date)
CMS Provider Policies
There are 3 new provider policies that apply to hospitals and physicians.
Policy
Policy Details
Additional Information
Compliance Date
Public Reporting and Information Blocking
CMS will put up a public list of providers and clinicians who act as information blockers based on their attestation to CMS Promoting Interoperability (PI) Program or the MIPS program.
CMS will also put up an additional list of providers based on their performance in a way to promote the interoperability under the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS).
Late 2020
Digital Contact Information
CMS will publish a list of names and National Provider Identifier (NPI) of the providers who do not have digital contact information.
The providers need to have the digital contact information included in the National Plan and Provider Enumeration System (NPPES)
Second Half of 2020
Admission, Discharge and Transfer (ADT) Event Notifications
CMS is making modifications to Conditions of Participation (CoP) which requires hospitals to send electronic patient event notifications of the patient’s admission, discharge and transfer to another facility/provider/practitioner.
This event messaging system will help deliver improved care coordination and better patient outcome.
Fall 2020; Changed to Spring 2021. This rule is effective 12 months after the final rule is published in the Federal Register, which will be May 1, 2020.
COVID-19 Challenge Brings Relief for Payers and Providers
The COVID-19 crisis has crippled the world economy to something that has never been witnessed before. The US Healthcare domain is no different! Healthcare providers and payers are facing an uncertain future in this pandemic situation.
CMS has acknowledged the seriousness of this situation, especially for hospitals (CAHs), and decided to extend the implementation of Admission, Discharge and Transfer (ADT) Event Notifications by 6 months (from Fall 2020 to Spring 2021).
ONC Final Rule
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) also finalized technical, content and vocabulary standards in the 21st Century Cures Act Final Rule. The rule focuses on advancing interoperability by supporting the access, exchange, and use of electronic health information (EHI) and information blocking.
The ONC final rule identifies 8 exceptions when a healthcare actor will not be considered as an information blocker. These exceptions are divided into two categories –
Exceptions that involve not fulfilling requests to access, exchange, or use EHI
Preventing Harm Exception
Privacy Exception
Security Exception
Infeasibility Exception
Health IT Performance Exception
Exceptions that involve procedures for fulfilling requests to access, exchange, or use EHI
Content and Manner Exception
Fees Exception
Licensing Exception
ONC has finalized the transition from Common Clinical Data Set (CCDS) to the United States Core Data for Interoperability (USCDI). USCDI allows for a broader sharing of electronic health information to support patient care.
How VNB Health Can Help?
VNB Health can help payers and providers with best-in-class and easy-to-use interoperability solution. Our solution takes advantage of FHIR API in order to meet the CMS interoperability final rule requirements. As a HL7 Gold Member, VNB Health has been working on HL7 FHIR since its inception. We’ve built a variety of services by leveraging the power of Microsoft Cloud Platform and FHIR resources. Take advantage of our continuous innovation mindset to connect existing health data sources to new devices; and, generate actionable insights across all your health data.
Want to build your interoperability solution to meet the rules and regulations? Contact us to find out how we can help you with your interoperability needs.
Microsoft’s Azure API for FHIR is an offering to connect existing data sources like electronic health record systems and research databases. This solution is a long standing need for a simplified data management with a single, consistent solution for protected health information (PHI) in the cloud. This is an onset for new opportunities with analytics, machine learning and actionable intelligence across an Healthcare enterprise’s health data.
Microsoft Azure FHIR API allows rapid exchange data in the HL7 FHIR standard format with a single, simplified data management solution for protected health information (PHI). It brings together health data from disparate systems using industry standard HL7 FHIR. This robust, extensible data model standardizes semantics and data exchange so all systems using FHIR can work together.
Microsoft Azure FHIR API helps relate points of data from across disparate systems to create richer datasets. Using these datasets we can enable advanced analytics scenarios that promote better health outcomes. Thereby we can connect people and health data in intelligent new ways across your infrastructure, productivity applications, business applications and analytics.
It allows to store your PHI data with confidence. Azure security isolates data and provides layered, in-depth defense and advanced threat protection that’s aligned to strict industry compliance standards. Azure covers more than 90 compliance certifications including ISO 27001 and meets HIPAA regulatory requirements.
The robust and extensible data model standardizes semantics and data exchange so all systems using FHIR can work together. Microsoft Azure FHIR API enables rapid exchange of data through Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR®) APIs, backed by a managed Platform-as-a Service (PaaS) offering in the cloud. It makes it easier for anyone working with health data to ingest, manage, and persist Protected Health Information PHI in the cloud.
Some of the detailed feature set of this service are as follows:
Managed FHIR service, provisioned in the cloud in minutes
Enterprise-grade, FHIR®-based endpoint in Azure for data access, and storage in FHIR® format
High performance, low latency
Secure management of Protected Health Data (PHI) in a compliant cloud environment
SMART on FHIR for mobile and web implementations
Control your own data at scale with Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
Audit log tracking for access, creation, modification, and reads within each data store
Overall, it allows one to create and deploy a FHIR service in just minutes to leverage the elastic scale of the cloud. We pay only for the throughput and storage we need. The Azure services that power the Azure FHIR API are designed for rapid performance no matter what size datasets you are managing.
Microsoft takes care of the ease of operations of a FHIR Server which takes on the operations, maintenance, updates, and compliance requirements in the PaaS offering. This is an enabler to free an enterprise’s own operational and development resources.
At VNB Health, we did a deep dive into Azure FHIR API. Below is the service blade in Azure in our dev environment.
Benefits and Highlights of Microsoft Azure FHIR API
Securely manage health data in the cloud
The Azure API for FHIR allows for the exchange of data via consistent, RESTful, FHIR APIs based on the HL7 FHIR specification. Backed by a managed PaaS offering in Azure, it also provides a scalable and secure environment for the management and storage of Protected Health Information (PHI) data in the native FHIR format.
Free up your resources to innovate
A health enterprise could invest resources building and running their own FHIR service. With the Azure API for FHIR, Microsoft takes on the workload of operations, maintenance, updates and compliance requirements. This allows you to free up your own operational and development resources.
Enable interoperability with FHIR
Using the Azure API for FHIR enables connect with any system that leverages FHIR APIs for read, write, search, and other functions. It can be used as a powerful tool to consolidate, normalize, and apply machine learning with clinical data from electronic health records, clinician and patient dashboards, remote monitoring programs, or with databases outside of an enterprise’s system that have FHIR APIs.
Control Data Access at Scale
Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) enables managing how the data is stored and accessed. Providing increased security and reducing administrative workload, we determine who has access to the datasets we create, based on role definitions we create for our environment.
Audit logs and tracking
Quickly track where the data is going with built-in audit logs. Track access, creation, modification, and reads within each data store.
Secure your data
We can now Protect PHI with unparalleled security intelligence. The data is isolated to a unique database per API instance and protected with multi-region failover. The Azure API for FHIR implements a layered, in-depth defense and advanced threat protection for the data.
Dynamics 365 Health Accelerator rapidly develops healthcare solutions using data model and use case templates based on HL7/FHIR. The Microsoft Health Accelerator enables partners and customers to create new use cases and workflows using a FHIR-based data model. It includes the following:
Pre-built entities and forms: Access to a wide range of FHIR-based entities and relationships allowing for rapid development of new healthcare solutions
Compliance: Standard based model built on a foundation of trust within a platform that is fully compliant with industry compliance standards including HIPAA and HITRUST
Care Team Visualization: A connected view of the care team associated with a patient and their roles that can be configured to include family and other related relationships
Patient Timeline: Presentation of clinical information about a patient in chronological order enabling providers to visualize all patient interactions and make informed care decisions
Native CDM Support: Health entities unified with standard CDM entities ensuring consistency across applications which allows rapid and seamless integration to 3rd party EMR and EHR systems
Dynamics 365 Health Entities
The accelerator provides a specific set of primary entities in support of the FHIR HL7 specification. Below are the entities that have been provided in the solution
Patients
Practitioners
Organizations
Devices
Locations
Healthcare Services
Care Plans
Allergy Intolerances
Clinical Impression Problems
Risk Assessments
Observations
Specimens
Encounters
Episodes of care
Medications
Medication Requests
Medication Administration
Dynamics 365 Health with Azure API Integration for FHIR
We have created a Dynamics 365 Health with Azure API integration for FHIR and integrated Patients and Care Plan to Azure FHIR API. We are creating and updating Patient and Care Plan on Azure FHIR API on create and Update of Patient and Care Plan records in Dynamics 365 Health via Microsoft Flow. We have created a custom connector that connects to Azure FHIR API and created Actions in that Connector.
How to Create a Patient from Dynamics 365 Health UI into Azure FHIR Server or Azure FHIR API
Login to Dynamics 365 Health App and click on Patients
Click on New
Fill in the details of the Patient and click Save
When we save the record in Dynamics 365 Health, this will create Patient in Azure FHIR API. We are checking this by Creating a Canvas App which get list of all Patients in Azure FHIR API.
Update Patients from Dynamics 365 Health UI into Azure FHIR Server or Azure FHIR API
Open an existing Patient and update Date Of Birth to Sept 1, 2018.
Click on Save
When we save the record in Dynamics 365 Health, this will update Patient in Azure FHIR API. We are checking this by Creating a Canvas App which get list of all Patients in Azure FHIR API.
Extend Dynamics 365 Health and Add New Entities
Invoice Management
We have used standard Dynamics 365 CRM Invoice and Invoice Line as Invoice and Charge Item in Dynamics 365 Health.
We have also added few fields not present in Dynamics 365 as per FHIR HL7.
We can use Product, Price List and Price List Item to setup Price of any service or Medication and then generate Invoices based on Product and Services Delivered.
FHIR is the latest development that’s gaining ground fast in the healthcare industry. It aims at breaking the barriers of seamless data exchange across various healthcare organizations that a patient typically interacts with. It is aiming at better patient care and enhanced patient engagement.
FHIR stands for Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources. Developed by Health Level Seven International (commonly known as HL7), it’s an interoperability specification for the exchange of real time health care information electronically. The aim of FHIR is to address the growing digitization of the healthcare industry and the need for patient records to be readily “available, discoverable, and understandable.” Here’s a closer look at FHIR, its potential benefits and challenges.
Purpose of FHIR
FHIR is a standard developed by HL7 in response to the growing use of electronic health records (EHRs) and aims to “simplify implementation without sacrificing information integrity.” FHIR builds on previous data format standards from HL7, like HL7 version 2.x and HL7 version 3.x. But it is easier to implement because it uses a modern web-based suite of API technology, including a HTTP-based RESTful protocol, HTML and Cascading Style Sheets for user interface integration, a choice of JSON, XML or RDF for data representation, and Atom for results.
FHIR provides an alternative to document-centric approaches by directly exposing discrete data elements as services. For example, basic elements of healthcare like patients, admissions, diagnostic reports and medications can each be retrieved and manipulated via their own resource URLs. FHIR was supported at an American Medical Informatics Association meeting by many EHR vendors which value its open and extensible nature. To do this, FHIR “leverages existing logical and theoretical models to provide a consistent, easy to implement, and rigorous mechanism for exchanging data between healthcare applications.” The goal is to build a base set of resources that satisfy the majority of common use cases.
Benefits of using FHIR
FHIR can be used as a stand-alone data exchange standard or in conjunction with existing standards. Essentially, the goal of FHIR is to standardize the exchange of healthcare information, enabling healthcare providers and administrators to easily share patient information even when they’re using different software systems. With FHIR, each resource is associated with a unique identifier. Much like URLs make it easy to find a specific web page regardless of the device or browser you’re using, FHIR makes it possible to access the right information from any application or device.
By creating standard URLs for packets of information, FHIR eliminates the need to exchange individual documents or data back and forth between systems, while ensuring that disparate applications can point to the right information, and the same version of that information, simultaneously. This would allow developers to build more user-friendly applications with web-browser-esque functionality that ensure fast, reliable access to accurate data regardless of the EHR or other application being used, which in turn offers the potential for several benefits, such as:
Easy implementation
Improves the speed of healthcare delivery by making data readily accessible
Standardizes and structures data for automated clinical support and other machine-based processing
Eliminates the time-consuming document-based exchange of information, feeding information directly into workflows
Challenges in Healthcare and how FHIR solves these challenges?
Healthcare records are increasingly becoming digitized. As patients move around the healthcare ecosystem, their electronic health records must be available, discoverable, and understandable. Further, to support automated clinical decision support and other machine-based processing, the data must also be structured and standardized. (See Coming digital challenges in healthcare)
HL7 has been addressing these challenges by producing healthcare data exchange and information modeling standards for over 20 years. This is a new specification based on emerging industry approaches, but informed by years of lessons around requirements, successes and challenges gained through defining and implementing HL7 v2, HL7 v3 and the RIM, and CDA. It can be used as a stand-alone data exchange standard but can and will also be used in partnership with existing widely used standards.
FHIR aims to simplify implementation without sacrificing information integrity. It leverages existing logical and theoretical models to provide a consistent, easy to implement, and rigorous mechanism for exchanging data between healthcare applications. It has built-in mechanisms for traceability to the HL7 RIM and other important content models. This ensures alignment to HL7’s previously defined patterns and best practices without requiring the implementer to have intimate knowledge of the RIM or any HL7 v3 derivations.
Components of FHIR
The basic building block in FHIR is a Resource. All exchangeable content is defined as a resource. Resources all share the following set of characteristics:
A common way to define and represent them, building them from data types that define common reusable patterns of elements
FHIR uses standardized APIs to create plug-and-play applications. This serves to remove the gaps and errors that the current document-based system of information exchange brings with it. An application developed for FHIR can be plugged into any EHR and information can be obtained; there is no scope for information to be lost, and it’s easier to obtain specific details instead of a large volume of data to sift through.
What can FHIR do for Patients and Healthcare Service Providers?
There are a lot of expectations from FHIR with regards to improving patient engagement, seamless data transfer, and developing better care management programs. For patients, FHIR makes it easier to contact healthcare service providers by eliminating the hassle of having multiple portals for the same. This can also be used for obtaining smaller, specific data from eHealth or mHealth apps, wearable devices, monitors, and other sources to perform health analytics and make estimates, thus helping in preventive care. It can also offer a holistic and comprehensive picture of the patient’s health, medications, and episodes.
FHIR for Data Monitoring
FHIR supports a variety of applications and data sources, which makes it easy to access data snippets from various channels. Monitoring the mass of healthcare data is tough. It is possible to save a lot of time by enabling focussed data access, and converting this specific data into actionable insights.
