FHIR Detector
Enabling healthcare collaboration and population health insight
FHIRDetector.org is an education, research, and development site dedicated to sharing knowledge on new healthcare technologies and standards that allow hospitals, clinicians, and patients to exchange healthcare information for better patient care and better knowledge for hospitals and clinics to collaborate on informed treatments and solutions.
The pandemic demonstrated and exposed that both global early warning systems for outbreaks and coordinated collaborative response systems are severely deficient and inadequate.
At the same time, widely used healthcare technology and medical devices have historically lagged using legacy technologies in comparison to advances in the areas of Internet of Things and processing abilities following Moore's Law.
With the newly mandated FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) (pronounced like 'fire') standard, we have the ability to implement end-to-end interoperable technology stacks that follow clinical and Internet standards.
Global problems demand global solutions
Problem
One of the biggest existing problems in the healthcare field is the lack of information sharing or adoption of standards and methods to exchange data between patients, clinics, hospitals, labs, insurance providers, and regional health authorities. Direct or automated data exchange interoperability standards are historically limited between healthcare entities within the same city, province/state, and country, let alone in international collaboration.
This problem is being addressed at the level of EMR (Electronic Medical Record) systems which have been mandated to follow interoperability standards, but is still limited in terms of how medical data is communicated from medical equipment and devices in the first place.
It is already difficult for healthcare IT to keep up with the ever-accelerating introduction of new medical equipment and software into the environment and this is exacerbated when there is a lack of standardized protocols, formats, and interoperability. Lengthy and complicated custom integration and implementation are often required along with customized software, middleware, and interfaces to accommodate, leading to "one-off" solutions. Similarly, extensive work is also required to discontinue dependencies on legacy or proprietary medical equipment and software.
Solution
Interoperability in healthcare refers to the design of medical devices and systems to communicate and exchange data with each other based on established and collaborative standards. When medical equipment and software are selected that are designed to follow interoperability including standardized protocols, lead time on adoption and integration of technologies is reduced. Clinics and hospitals have more choices as they are not tied to proprietary or "one-off" solutions and they are able to operate with solutions from different vendors as well as communicate and collaborate with each other efficiently using automation.
In addition to increased efficiencies and reduced manual load on the healthcare system, studies have shown that the implementation of interoperability standards across all healthcare entities nationally can reduce overall healthcare costs as measured by GDP by at least 1%. At a cost of an overall approximately 4 trillion dollars in America, the national cost of healthcare would be reduced by 40 billion dollars. At a cost of an overall approximately 200 billion dollars in Canada, the national cost of healthcare would be reduced by 2 billion dollars. Medical device interoperability is one part of this solution.
Global Benefits
Aside from speeding up implementation, increasing efficiencies, reducing workloads and costs, new doors are opened for collaboration beyond local borders. The American government, specifically the ONC (Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology) have legislated and mandated laws that require EMR (Electronic Medical Record) vendors to use the FHIR interoperability standard. Since all 10 of the top 10 EMR vendors worldwide are American companies, this effectively guides all major hospitals around the world to adopt these standards.
When medical devices can be implemented and deployed using these same standards for communication, then patients anywhere around the world will be able to connect to and exchange data with the healthcare resources they require. Clinics, hospitals, and labs will be able to monitor geographically dispersed population health and have tools to help serve as early warning systems for the detection of diseases and viruses. Patterns with enough data points can be analyzed using artificial intelligence / machine learning. It is possible to have new, innovative, and very different responses to future global viruses or diseases.
