In this whitepaper, we will discuss how FHIR enables healthcare interoperability by allowing payers, providers, etc. to securely exchange patient and clinical data stored in diverse systems, locations, and formats.
Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) is a next-generation standard framework created by HL7. It is based on RESTful protocols. Authentication is provided by the open-source OAuth2 standard. Payload security is handled by HTTPS.
FHIR works 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 resources.
It will support smoother costing and financial transactions/billing between providers, patients, and payers sharing clinical data across systems has always been a challenge because of a lack of accessibility, and standardization. Like banking systems that operate transactions from one bank to another (in different state/countries) with a common ground of VISA/Master cards handling the data interoperability, healthcare system to achieves similar interoperability with FHIR.
