EMI Grand Rounds Webinar: Fast Health Information Resources (FHIR)

Interoperable health information technology (HIT) and health data is on the agenda of every federal organization since President Obama announced the Precision Medicine Initiative this past year. Interoperability is hard, but there are many artificial obstacles as reflected in the ONC report on information blocking released to Congress at the end of last year.

The HL7 Fast Health Information Resources (FHIR) represents the latest and greatest effort in the field. Supported by the National Coordinator (ONC), standards developers (HL7, S&I Framework) and a growing number of developers and vendors FHIR is becoming a real solution. This presentation will frame the interoperability issue from a technical sense and describe ongoing efforts to develop FHIR into standardized specifications to support widespread health data sharing. Some public resources and opportunities to participate will be provided also.

Dr. McClay is associate professor of EM at University of Nebraska Medical Center where he chairs the Biomedical Informatics Graduate Program. He chairs the Emergency Care Workgroup at HL7 where he represents ACEP members interests in ongoing health information technology standards development. He is also a past chair of SEMI at ACEP.