Read the full article at: healthitanalytics.com
“Along with rapidly growing interest in APIs, the burgeoning FHIR ecosystem could have a significant effect on the way EHRs are designed, and that could render most of the current objections about EHR usability and interoperability moot.
The future of the EHR is going to look a lot like your phone. How much time do you actually spend sitting in front of the Apple or Android interface as opposed to any number of apps written by third parties? How many people use an email client that isn’t written by Apple, or the Facebook app, or Twitter? Those weren’t written by Apple. Apple just provides the platform.”
“And I think that’s what EHRs are going to look like. Eventually, we’re going to stop building the Swiss Army knife, and we’re just going to have a basic platform with lots of little applets sitting on top of it.”
This fantastic feature in Health IT Analytics on the new interoperability urgency in healthcare is a must read. It lays it all on the line with a fair representation from all sides off the issue of interoperability.
The fact is that many healthcare organizations did not demand that their EHRs interoperate with each other until just recently. And, like good software companies do, the vendors are now working to open up their systems to FHIR-based APIs, accessible by outside applications.
These new attitudes and willpower will help the industry make leaps and bounds toward a truly connected health data ecosystem, much like our customers are already realizing. In order to fully reap the benefits of FHIR and API access to EHRs, health IT departments will need to start with an integrated foundation that includes all internal applications… because having information from each patient-facing application tied together will provide caregivers with the complete picture of the patient and allow for a new era of health care.
