Healthcare Data Architect FHIR Advisor Author
I work with a lot of organizations using FHIR for the first time. It always starts with me challenging and correcting what they think they understand about FHIR and about FHIR servers. Many of their misunderstandings trace back to discussions they had with server vendors. They were not lied to, but they were never told [ ]
You didn’t build RBAC, because you thought SMART on FHIR had you covered. “Read” scopes made you think authorization was done. Then you didn’t build ABAC (attribute based access control), because you thought RBAC was enough. Until you learned that access needed to depend on the relationship between a clinician and a patient, something roles [ ]
Every national digital health program thinks its situation is unique. Different legacy systems, different regulations, different politics, different funding models, different ways of doing things. All leading to unique and often poorly conceived solutions that leave every party involved mildly dissatisfied. The problems are rarely unique, no matter how much we d like to think they [ ]
Private health tech companies are increasingly building data platforms with FHIR at the center. The logic is sound. Consolidate data from multiple sources and systems into a single “Platform”, and store it in a structured and well understood format. Make it available for AI, for research, for analytics, and for integrations with partners and customers. [ ]
There is a widespread assumption that FHIR and AI are a natural fit. That once your data is in a FHIR server it is structured, standardized and ready to be consumed by AI. This is not always true. FHIR enforces a consistent data structure. It uses standardized terminology and defines clear relationships between resources. On [ ]
openEHR is technically superior to FHIR as a clinical data model but the market doesn’t seem to care. This article is not a comparison of the two standards. It’s an examination of why openEHR is not dominant. People who have worked seriously with both standards know what openEHR does better than FHIR. That argument has [ ]
One of the first FHIR projects I worked on used an open-source library from a big-name FHIR server provider to convert HL7 v2 and CCDA direct to FHIR. It used liquid templates that claimed to be customizable but in practice were fixed. It worked for the first hospital integration, failed for the second, and was [ ]
Data is building up in your FHIR server. What’s next? The business weighs in: “We have all this rich patient data. What can we use it for?” Analytical dashboards, AI ingestion, academic and business research. To use healthcare data for these purposes in a compliant and legal way often involves de-identifying or anonymizing FHIR resources [ ]
“FHIR Compliant” does not mean what you think it means. Let’s say you want to integrate with a number of different EHRs. Each one claims FHIR compliance and each one has comprehensive API documentation. You get to work, confident that you can build a single interface to talk FHIR to each EHR. After all, that’s [ ]
The online FHIR community and events like DevDays lean heavily toward the US and Europe. But that’s a filtered reality. FHIR is being used all over the world, and hard questions are being asked about how to use it in many countries that are not strongly represented in FHIR discussions. I got a stark reminder [ ]