FHIR: Reducing Friction in the Exchange of Healthcare Data

Abstract

With the full clout of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services currently being brought to bear on healthcare providers to meet high standards for patient data interoperability and accessibility, it would be easy to assume the only reason this goal wasn't accomplished long ago is simply a lack of will. Interoperable data? How hard can that be? Much harder than you think, it turns out. To dig into why this is the case, we asked Pat Helland, a principal architect at Salesforce, to speak with James Agnew (CTO) and Adam Cole (senior solutions architect) of Smile CDR, a Toronto, Ontario-based provider of a leading platform used by healthcare organizations to achieve FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) compliance. They discuss the efforts and misadventures witnessed along the way to a time where it no longer seems inconceivable for healthcare providers to exchange patient records.