Stream: social
Topic: How we know FHIR will be widely adopted
Bob Milius (Oct 16 2017 at 21:23):
I'm writing a up proposal for using FHIR, and one of the our early internal reviewers asks, "How do we know that FHIR will be widely adopted as we predict?" I'm citing a number of things, including current interest and active development by
- EHR vendors (evidenced by the Argonaut project and products now supporting FHIR such as Epic and Cerner),
- software developers (evidenced by the continued growth in attendees in FHIR Connectathons),
- healthcare providers such as Mayo Clinic, Partners, Intermountain (all founding members of Arogonaut, and all active in the HL7 FHIR community),
- US government organizations (e.g., ONC: Sync for Science and Sync for Genes)
- scientific societies such as the American Society of Clinical Oncology (recommended platform for -omic app framework).
- support by other healthcare standards organizations such the HSPC and IHE
anything else I can point to?
Grahame Grieve (Oct 16 2017 at 21:25):
lack of alternatives from outside HL7. Lack of support for process from CDA. Lack of modern architecture from v2.
Grahame Grieve (Oct 16 2017 at 21:25):
as far as I can see, it's FHIR or bust
Jens Villadsen (Oct 16 2017 at 21:27):
FHIR is widely adopted. Attend any healthcare IT related conference and count the number of events/talks that somehow mentions FHIR. Now do the same for CDA and HL7v2.
Jens Villadsen (Oct 16 2017 at 21:29):
And your point of view seems pretty US centric.
Grahame Grieve (Oct 16 2017 at 21:29):
probably appropriate for Bob's context.
Bob Milius (Oct 16 2017 at 21:32):
@Jens Villadsen thanks. Yes, it's a US proposal.
Abbie Watson (Oct 16 2017 at 22:49):
anything else I can point to?
Uh, The Internet.
All those other arguments are peanuts compared to the worldwide adoption of internet standards by billions of people. The simple fact that FHIR is using HTTP, REST, XML, JSON, OAUTH and other webstandards specified by the W3C almost ensures it's worldwide adoption.
Bob Milius (Oct 16 2017 at 22:54):
Thanks, @Abigail Watson Yeah, I failed to mention that I also used that point in the proposal. But are there any other platforms that claim to use those things? Or is FHIR unique among healthcare standards in using that approach?
Abbie Watson (Oct 16 2017 at 22:58):
Well... there's Open mHealth; but they didn't have the clout and experience of HL7.
Let's be honest... HL7 is the 700lb gorilla of healthcare interoperability. They've been doing it longer than anybody else. They were literally the first organization to ever connect 2 hospital systems together. They've got the right experience, the right connections, the right political clout... and now they're building on the right protocols. There's no turning this train around.
That's what I tell people when they ask. And now MACRA is going to require interoperability; so there's a financial incentive for US companies to adopt a common standard. And who are they going to look to for guidance? HL7, because they've been in the game for 40+ years.
Grahame Grieve (Oct 16 2017 at 23:02):
Uh, The Internet
QOTD
Jim Kreth (Oct 17 2017 at 14:32):
The other thing that is not as widely visible is the extent to which healthcare companies are leveraging FHIR for internal development needs (not commercial software). My team is using FHIR to provide an access layer over many of our internal legacy data stores. We're providing these FHIR services as a resource to other internal and contract dev teams to standardize/modernize how they access our data resources.
Last updated: Apr 12 2022 at 19:14 UTC
