The Standard

As is customary, the team held a FHIR® Connectathon preceding the HL7 International Conference & Working Group Meeting in Madrid earlier this month.

Connectathons are an integral part of the HL7 FHIR process as they help validate the decisions that are made as part of the overall development of the specification, and ensure the standard is as easy as possible to implement (recognizing that healthcare interoperability is always going to be complex). 

HL7 FHIR Connectathon 15 had approximately 80 attendees – a bit down from previous connectathons, though still a strong turnout for an event held outside of the US. 

This connecthaton featured 10 tracks, click here to read the complete list. 

Following are some of the highlights: 

How Applicadia Leverages FHIR, CQL and CIMI

The medical software industry often exhibits great reluctance in adopting new approaches and technology. HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR^®), which has been enthusiastically embraced, is an exception. FHIR is in the limelight and is being adopted at an unprecedented rate. However, FHIR also has two other sister-standards that aren’t getting the attention they deserve: Clinical Quality Language (CQL) and the Clinical Information Modeling Initiative (CIMI). When combined with FHIR, CQL and CIMI bring powerful and important capabilities to healthcare platforms that go far beyond what FHIR can deliver on its own.

Applicadia Wins Best in Show at HL7's March 2017 FHIR Applications Roundtable 

Applicadia’s mission is to build a suite of tools, components and libraries, that facilitate the integration of FHIR, CQL and CIMI clinical models into existing healthcare platforms.

At the HL7 FHIR Application Roundtable event, Applicadia demonstrated a novel speech-based charting application that leverages Clinical Natural Lanugage Processing (NLP) and CIMI clinical models to capture structured information at the point-of-care, without ever having to touch a keyboard. As a clinician speaks, SNOMED CT and LOINC descriptors are built from his or her statements and used to determine which pre-defined schema (CIMI clinical model) best describes the clinical situation. The system can then prompt for additional information, as necessary, until a fully encoded and computable standards-compliant medical record is produced that conforms to the expectations of its matching FHIR profile.

You can watch the Applicadia demo from the March 2017 FHIR Applications Roundtable by clicking here.

It’s my pleasure to make you aware of the next HL7 FHIR Connectathon taking place on Saturday,   May 6 and Sunday, May 7 in Madrid, Spain. This event takes place in conjunction with the May 2017 International Conference & Working Group Meeting. 

Hard to believe, but it’s already the 15^th one and we look forward to many more.

If you are thinking about attending this Connectathon, but you’re not sure if it is right for you, or even where to start, as one of the organizers, I can help. 

The HL7 FHIR® Applications Roundtable: A Showcase of FHIR-Based Solutions 
An Attendee's Perspective

This month, I had the pleasure of attending the HL7 FHIR Applications Roundtable at Duke University. As an MD that recently defected into the software world, I'm going to take a few paragraphs to briefly explain the significance of HL7 and Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) to my non-technical friends and medical school colleagues.

Introducing the HL7 Companion Guide to Consolidated Clinical Document Architecture (C-CDA®) 2.1

On March 3, 2017, Health Level Seven International and the Duteau Design Inc. team of Jean Duteau, Joginder Madra, Helen Stevens, and Lisa Nelson published the Companion Guide to Consolidated Clinical Document Architecture (C-CDA) 2.1. This companion guide is a supplement to HL7's  CDA R2 Implementation Guide (IG): C-CDA Templates for Clinical Notes STU Release 2.1.

Health Level Seven® International (HL7®), the global authority for interoperability in healthcare information technology with members in 55 countries, today announced that the HL7 FHIR Foundation is now working with Google to support HL7’s Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standard and the FHIR community using Google Cloud Platform.