Practical Applications of FHIR in Healthcare: Real-world Use Cases Explored

• November 21, 2023

Introduction

Today, we're delving into some notable FHIR use cases, highlighting its significance in the healthcare industry. The FHIR standard represents a game-changer, greatly smoothing data exchange processes.

While the adoption of Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources is increasing among healthcare software providers, it remains a complex journey with its own set of challenges. Navigating this path involves delving into detailed specifications, ensuring data coherence, prioritizing security, and overcoming various hurdles.

Fortunately, with expert guidance and support from KPi-Tech, this journey can be significantly simplified. Our team has already assisted numerous healthcare providers in successfully implementing FHIR. In this piece, we'll delve into the applications of FHIR and its broader impact on healthcare.

HL7 FHIR's Role

HL7 FHIR, a contemporary interoperability standard developed by Health Level 7 (HL7), aims to streamline health data exchange, encompassing clinical information to administrative records.

In 2012, a group of health IT experts, led by FHIR's creator Grahame Grieve, posed a transformative question: "How would health information exchange look if it were initiated today, leveraging modern approaches?". This led to the inception of FHIR, simplifying data exchange using familiar web technologies like JSON and XML, and providing a versatile, adaptable framework for modern healthcare.

But what does FHIR serve?

FHIR boasts numerous applications. Through unique tagging of each data element, akin to web page URLs, FHIR enables seamless data accessibility across devices. This paves the way for the creation of interactive applications for convenient and consistent access to healthcare information, regardless of the EHR in use.

FHIR can be leveraged for streamlined integration, swifter access to easily comprehensible medical records, standardized data for automated clinical assistance, and reduced time for exchanging document-based information.

HL7 FHIR serves as a versatile solution in modern healthcare, offering six key applications:

Personal Health Record

1. Original: Managing and accessing personal health records across different healthcare providers and systems is often fragmented and challenging for patients.
2. FHIR's Role: FHIR integration streamlines health data exchange, allowing patients to aggregate and access their personal information seamlessly. Standardized data formats and APIs provide a comprehensive view of their health, enhancing care coordination and informed decision-making.

Healthcare Document Sharing

1. Original: Sharing healthcare documents, such as medical records, between healthcare institutions and providers can be slow, cumbersome, and error-prone.
2. FHIR's Role: FHIR simplifies document sharing by offering a structured and standardized format for healthcare documents. This ensures accurate and efficient information exchange between different systems.

Clinical Decision Support

1. Original: Healthcare professionals often face information overload when making clinical decisions. They need quick access to evidence-based guidelines and patient-specific data.
2. FHIR's Role: FHIR aids clinical decision support systems by organizing patient data. It allows seamless integration with EHRs, providing real-time, relevant information to assist healthcare providers in making well-informed decisions, ultimately enhancing patient safety and care.

Public Health Surveillance

1. Original: Public health organizations need timely and accurate data to monitor disease outbreaks, track health trends, and respond to health emergencies.
2. FHIR's Role: FHIR implementation standardizes public health data exchange, making it easier for healthcare facilities to report pertinent data to public health authorities. This streamlines surveillance and response efforts, enabling quicker interventions and better population health management.

Clinical Research

1. Original: Clinical research often involves collecting, aggregating, and analyzing data from various sources, which can be a time-consuming and error-prone process.
2. FHIR's Role: FHIR facilitates data sharing between research institutions, EHRs, and other systems. Researchers can access structured data from diverse sources, accelerating the research process and supporting advancements in medical science.

Patient Engagement

1. Original: Engaging patients in their own healthcare and treatment plans is crucial, but it can be challenging to provide them with accessible and understandable health information.
2. FHIR's Role: FHIR promotes patient engagement by enabling the development of user-friendly healthcare apps and portals. Patients can access their health data, receive personalized health information, and actively participate in their care, leading to improved health outcomes.

FHIR plays a pivotal role in supporting a wide array of healthcare initiatives:

1. Interoperability: FHIR champions interoperability, ensuring seamless communication and data sharing among healthcare systems, devices, and Health applications. This dismantles data silos and enables comprehensive patient care.
2. Telemedicine: In the telemedicine era, FHIR amplifies remote healthcare delivery. It facilitates the exchange of patient information, empowering physicians to make well-informed decisions regardless of geographical barriers.
3. Digital health: FHIR facilitates the creation of user-friendly health applications and devices. It empowers individuals to manage their health data, promoting better health management.
4. Value-based care: FHIR backs value-based care models by providing real-time access to patient data. This assists healthcare professionals in delivering high-quality, cost-effective care, ultimately improving patient outcomes.

FHIR's adaptability and versatility make it a foundational element for innovations like SMART on FHIR and address various use cases in healthcare.

Examples of FHIR in Real-world Workflows:

CoxHealth

1. Challenge: A shortage of dermatologists led to primary care physicians performing dermatology exams, lacking specialized expertise.
2. FHIR Solution: Utilizing a SMART on FHIR app called VisualDx, doctors gained access to advanced resources like medical imaging and machine learning. This enabled accurate diagnoses of skin conditions.

The Joint Commission

1. Application: Extracting quality metric data from member organizations, such as surgical facilities, using HQMF and FHIR.
2. FHIR Role: Through IBM's Operational Decision Management software, The Joint Commission applies quality rules to generate reports and rankings for members and government organizations.

The Gravity Project

1. Initiative: Addressing social determinants' impact on health outcomes by standardizing and utilizing related data.
2. FHIR Application: Collaborating with 800+ stakeholders to develop guidelines for capturing data on food security, housing stability, and transportation access using the FHIR standard. This facilitates seamless integration between healthcare and social care data.

These examples illustrate how FHIR is applied in real-world scenarios to enhance healthcare practices and outcomes.

How we use FHIR

Our client, a US-based ambulatory Electronic Medical Record (EMR) provider, faced challenges due to increasing claim denials from insurance companies. This trend, particularly in cases of chronic or persistent conditions, added significant operational costs for healthcare providers. To address this, the EMR application provider sought integration with a Patient Access solution, a revenue management platform aimed at boosting cash flow, reducing operational expenses, and enhancing the patient experience.

The key challenge was integrating admission data across the EMR and Patient Access Solution to ensure timely payer notifications and prevent delays in claims processing. The task was complicated by the lack of standardized data, requiring structured and standardized patient data (ADT - admission, discharge, and transfer) to support automated clinical decision support and machine-based processing.

KPi-Tech's solution leveraged the Mirth Integration engine to extract data from the EMR and transmit it using FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources), prioritizing information integrity without sacrificing implementation simplicity.

This FHIR integration significantly streamlined the process, leading to reduced scheduling costs and notably improved patient accessibility. FHIR messages, designed for human readability and modular sharing, offered enhanced transparency in data transmission. Beyond process optimization, the initiative resulted in increased average monthly reimbursements, strengthened patient engagement throughout administrative processes, elevated patient satisfaction, and improved financial performance. Patients also benefited from the convenience of completing check-in paperwork from their own homes, showcasing the transformative impact of strategic integration in healthcare operations.

RELATED: How Mirth Connect Supports the Latest Health Data Standard FHIR

Summary

FHIR has transformed the landscape of healthcare data exchange, fostering collaboration among diverse stakeholders and systems. Whether it's bolstering interoperability, championing quality healthcare initiatives, or demonstrating the real-world impact of FHIR, its significance is undeniable.

As we wrap up this exploration, we're reminded of FHIR's immense potential to elevate global healthcare. The showcased use cases, hurdles, and achievements serve as a glimpse into the vast possibilities that FHIR brings.

With KPi-Tech as your trusted Healthcare IT Partner, your organization can lead the way in embracing the FHIR revolution, ushering in an era of more streamlined, secure, and patient-centered healthcare services.