FHIR - Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources Read full article at http://www.j4jayant.com/articles/fhir/20-fhir-a-fire

1. FHIR – a “Fire” from HL7
Jayant Singh
http://www.j4jayant.com
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2. What is FHIR?
Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources has
emerged from the HL7 Fresh Look initiative (Jan
2011).
Pronounced as “Fire”, it is a framework for data
exchange technologies which offers interoperability
capabilities of RIM but hides the complexity of V3.
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3. HL7 V4?
Most of us (Healthcare Technology Enthusiast)
are very excited about FHIR.
Many have named it as HL7 V4
But it will not be marketed as V4 by HL7
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4. Need for a Fresh Look
Some key factors in poor market penetration of V3 are:
 Complex standard
 Long development lifecycle
 High implementation cost
With these, V3 couldn’t break the mindset of people who
are used to work on V2 – a pretty simpler, widely
accepted standard and have solved integration problems
for years.
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5. HL7 V3 not that bad!
CDA has been accepted by healthcare community and implemented
widely but documents are not enough to serve health data exchange
needs.
Yes, V3 a poor adoption but considering a fact that V3 development
was started in late 1990, I suppose, there were limited technologies
and healthcare data exchange needs identified.
Healthcare has evolved since then and now we feel a need for new
standard that works with new technologies available today.
This is necessary, eventually standards & technologies shall change
according to needs for better healthcare services.
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6. FHIR – concerns!
With the announcement of FHIR there are many
speculations. Some of the concerns are:
 Will it replace v2/v3?
 Shall I wait for FHIR?
It is too early to decide these things, FHIR is still a
work in progress & how market responds to it will
decide many upcoming trends in healthcare data
exchange.
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7. Health Data Exchange Future
Hl7 is committed to the development and support of V2 & V3
artifacts. Hl7 has released V2.7 and also working to release CDA
R3. There continue to be markets for all HL7 standards.
For now, it will not replace existing standards but all these
standards will co-exist and work together for better healthcare
service.
With this I see more business opportunities for integration
engine/service providers in future.
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8. References
• http://www.hl7.org/implement/standards/fhir/
• http://www.healthintersections.com.au/?p=482
• http://www.healthintersections.com.au/?p=1281
• http://healthinterconnect.blogspot.in/2012/03/hl7-cda-and-fhir.html
• http://blog.interfaceware.com/hl7/what-is-fhir-and-why-should-you-care/
• http://www.ringholm.com/column/Renovate_HL7_v3.htm
• http://www.slideshare.net/HINZ/hay-introduction-to-hl7-fhir
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9. Thank You
Jayant Singh
http://www.j4jayant.com
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