FHIR - Sero

What is FHIR 🔥?
FHIR is an acronym (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) and is pronounced like "fire"
FHIR is an interface for structured health data. FHIR is also:
✔️ A community health information systems standards project and is the registered trademark of HL7​
✔️ An API (REST) standard and structured document format (JSON/XML) for health data
✔️ An ONC/CMS ruled transport mechanism for health data​
✔️ A new way for developers, doctors, and patients to build applications that use and transform health data
API + document schema
REST APIs are familiar to developers. FHIR is, in part, a RESTful API over ~150 Resources (classes, entities, objects, tables, types). Each Resource has GET, POST, PATCH, etc HTTP operations. Base Resources can be constrained or extended with Profiles that are a kind of a document schema. Documents are formatted as JSON and XML.
FHIR is easy to use for developers because it exposes conventional API patterns from other industries to health care data specifically
A FHIR Resource formatted as JSON looks something like this:
JavaScript
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{
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  "resourceType": "Patient",
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  "id": "newborn",
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  "gender": "male",
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  "birthDate": "2021-08-05",
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}
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JSON is the world's most popular structured data storage format, and so it's compatible with every development environment. Sero's quickstart guide has some practical starting points for developers:
Quickstart for Devs 🏁
Patient friendly
FHIR powers patient access to health data like current and past medications, immunization history, allergies, diagnostic reports, clinical notes, care plans and more. 
Patient-directed access to FHIR data sources is a significant initiative in the United States and operates under the umbrella term "SMART":
SMART Health IT was launched with a New England Journal of Medicine article proposing a universal API (application programming interface) to transform EHRs into platforms for substitutable iPhone-like apps
With FHIR + SMART, patient-directed access to health data is not only possible - but available in totally transparent and open ways.
SMART Apps
Relevance
FHIR is actively used, required for use, or suggested for use in a number of public and private sector projects, but most interestingly in:
​Apple Health is built on FHIR​
​Argonaut Project is a unified private sector project from Apple, Microsoft, Epic, Cerner, Intermountain Healthcare and others to build next generation health systems on FHIR​
​21st Century Cures Act​
​Interoperability and Patient Access final rule (CMS-9115-F) explicitly requires FHIR APIs 
​SMART Health IT makes patient directed access possible​
​Health Cards, the emerging global immunization record standard, are built on FHIR​
Is FHIR the only standard?
No! FHIR is generally complementary to other standards though. In addition to FHIR, you might hear about:
HL7 V2
DICOM
OMOP
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For Founders, CTOs, and Devs - Previous

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SMART Apps

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Contents

What is FHIR 🔥?

API + document schema

Patient friendly

Relevance

Is FHIR the only standard?