FHIR Applications Roundtable at Harvard Medical School

The DHIT Team has been an active participant in FHIRConnectathons during the past two years. Among the benefits of these events is the unique glimpse they provide into what the industry is delivering with FHIR and how the standard continues to evolve through active development.

Our team is also eager to find connections between out interoperability expertise and real-world healthcare problems. With those (and other) goals in mind, our President Jeff Robbins attended the 1st
annual FHIR Applications Roundtable at Harvard  Medical School in Boston
to learn more.  

Although FHIR is a relatively new standard, it has great potential and forward-thinking healthcare IT
organizations are already deploying FHIR solutions. 
Harvard Medical School

The Roundtable consisted of
a series of 15 minute presentations by academics, software developers and
consultants highlighting FHIR-related projects.

The projects on display included patient
and provider-facing apps, Clinical Decision Support, clinical collaboration
platforms, patient education, all the way up to a complete, native FHIR-based
EHR. The expansiveness of the applications and implementations discussed demonstrates just how far the standard has come from its days in draft status.

On the policy front, Steve Posnack, Director of the Office of Standards and Technology at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology spoke about efforts to encourage interoperability through FHIR developement and the  HL7 FHIR App Ecosystem. ONC is encouraging market-ready FHIR support through its “challenges.”

DHIT plans to offer a CCDA-to-FHIR converter in the near
future.  Stay tuned!