First HL7 FHIR Connectathon a Success

Ease of use of FHIR standard results in successful deployments, leads the way to future events

BALTIMORE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Health Level Seven^® International (HL7^®), the global authority for interoperability and standards in healthcare information technology with members in 55 countries, today announced that it has successfully completed its first connectathon supporting its Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) Initiative.

FHIR is a new HL7 draft standard for data exchange in healthcare that is based on current industry principles, including the cloud, web 2.0 and RESTful principles. It defines a set of “resources” representing granular clinical concepts that can be managed in isolation, or aggregated into complex documents. This flexibility offers coherent solutions for a range of interoperability problems. HL7’s FHIR webpage, http://HL7.org/fhir, contains a more detailed introduction to FHIR as well as links to FHIR development and implementation resources.

Sixteen HL7 members participated in the inaugural FHIR Connectathon on Saturday, September 8, in Baltimore, including representatives from Kaiser Permanente, GE Healthcare, Orion Health, Mohawk College and Thrasys. The purpose of the event was to test the infrastructural components of FHIR (principally its representational state transfer (REST) interface and profiles) using a few relatively stable resources. Participants demonstrated three types of workflows: the creation and exchange of Profiles, of Persons, and of Lab Reports.

Participants cited the ease of interpreting the FHIR standard as the most important factor in successful server and client deployment. The FHIR Connectathon demonstrated that even quickly developed client applications were able to connect successfully with multiple servers and synchronize server data. In addition, the connectathon established that rapidly developed clients could be used for testing and validation. Finally, the standard’s use of REST for FHIR’s web services was cited as an important success factor for demonstrating connectivity.

Plans are underway to hold additional FHIR connectathons at future HL7 working group meetings. Future events may include additional features such as certification, pre-qualifications and educational offerings.

About Health Level Seven International (HL7)

Founded in 1987, Health Level Seven International is the global authority for healthcare information interoperability and standards with affiliates established in more than 30 countries. HL7 is a non-profit, ANSI accredited standards development organization dedicated to providing a comprehensive framework and related standards for the exchange, integration, sharing, and retrieval of electronic health information that supports clinical practice and the management, delivery and evaluation of health services. HL7’s more than 2,300 members represent approximately 500 corporate members, which include more than 90 percent of the information systems vendors serving healthcare. HL7 collaborates with other standards developers and provider, payer, philanthropic and government agencies at the highest levels to ensure the development of comprehensive and reliable standards and successful interoperability efforts.

For more information, please visit: www.HL7.org