Many healthcare industry players have been eagerly awaiting the fourth iteration of FHIR. As it continues to evolve, the FHIR standard will be largely backwards compatible from now onwards.

It’s been only a year since HL7 announced their latest version of FHIR, and Orion Health is pleased to announce that it’s comprehensive offering of FHIR version 4.0.1 APIs is now available.

What does FHIR version 4.0.1 offer?

FHIR as the means for interoperability

FHIR version 4.0.1 is the first normative version of the HL7 standard, meaning that most of the elements that it’s made of will not change unless it’s following a programmatic lifecycle. FHIR is finally backwards compatible.

APIs have been identified across the globe as the mechanism to break down barriers between health organisations, departments, providers, and for the patient too. In a collaborative ecosystem where the proliferation of smart applications is ever-growing, an international way to interact is necessary. FHIR R4 is the answer. 

By enabling the flow of electronic health information (EHI) not only across organisations but even to the fingertips of patients, FHIR R4 offers democratization and the opportunity to innovate through competitiveness.     

FHIR community resources

FHIR is now a global healthcare standard, indicated by many official HIT bodies and organisations as the means to achieve interoperability. 

Due to its global prevalence, the FHIR community provides tooling, training and resources available with country-specific content. HL7 encourages and supports all adopters of FHIR, from established healthcare networks to entities just starting on their interoperability journey. 

Updated implementation guides 

We see an increasing number of Implementation Guides that utilise FHIR 4 as their base. These new guidelines can be set to represent the needs of a specific country, with the related variations in the structure of FHIR resources (e.g. the US Core Implementation Guide v3.1.0) or to define rules of integration to satisfy specific use cases in an open ecosystem. (e.g. SMART App Launch Framework).

Orion Health can manage specific profiles thanks to the intrinsic flexibility built into them.  

Related specifications 

FHIR 4 features associated standards and projects that build on the FHIR core to address specific implementation issues. The CDSHooks, DaVinci project, and FHIR Bulk Data Access APIs are some examples. These projects embraced the FHIR standard and added value that goes beyond the enablement of a data-sharing environment. They respectively leverage decision support, payers’ workflows, and population management, through the standard clinical resources provided by FHIR.

What is the position of Orion Health with FHIR R4?  

Orion Health has been on the FHIR journey since the early days, evolving APIs alongside the FHIR versions maturity. We now have R4, which is normative, with a good level of backwards compatibility, and is ready to play a fundamental role in the API ecosystem. 

Multiple national HIT bodies and healthcare organisations set the bar to sharing data via FHIR version 4.0.1, making it a fundamental modern requirement when dealing with the electronic health record (e.g see ONC Cures Act in the US and LHCR requirements in the UK). 

Orion Health aims to be at the forefront of integration and interoperability. So with our dedicated effort and combined expertise (i.e. clinical domain knowledge, analysis, and technical skills), our Amadeus solution now provides FHIR 4.0.1 APIs for the EHI out of the box

We have implemented the FHIR R4 framework catering to future expansion. The longitudinal patient record needs to include emerging data classes (see United States Core Data for Interoperability) and common utilities and functionalities need to be available across all APIs that are built on it. Creating a clinical API is a crucial task, as careful mapping into the standard FHIR representation is required for data that might be modelled in proprietary way across storage solutions.  

FHIR R4 will mean our customers can now break down data silos, take advantage of the ever-growing number of smart apps, easily integrate with third parties, and become an active player in the competitive and innovative API ecosystem.   

What does this mean for our customers?

The following FHIR R4 APIs are now available on their own, as well as part of the Amadeus solution:

  • Allergy intolerance
  • Condition
  • Diagnostic report
  • Document Reference
  • Encounter
  • Immunization 
  • Medication administration 
  • Medication request 
  • Medication statement 
  • Patient
  • Practitioner
  • Procedure

Interested in learning more about what FHIR R4 means for you? Reach out to our FHIR experts.

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