SEND FEEDBACK TO ASTP
The draft action plan will function best if federal agency partners, the standards development community, and subject matter experts provide feedback to ASTP. The FHIR standard is a wide-ranging, community effort and as such there are federal efforts and insights that may not have risen to ASTP’s awareness. In particular, we welcome recommendations of specifications that should be added to the component tables and new capabilities that are progressing through early stages of development.
REUSE AND ADVANCE HL7® FHIR® COMPONENTS
Federal agencies are already re-using existing components in their development activities. We encourage agencies to collaborate with ASTP and relevant federal agencies in refining both existing and emerging components to ensure they meet their agency-specific needs.
Additionally, federal agencies should identify any new components that may be necessary to meet their needs. ASTP will continue to monitor and update the draft action plan based on agency input.
FEDERAL COORDINATION FOR ADVANCING THE FHIR STANDARD WITH HL7 STANDARDS DEVELOPMENT ORGANIZATION
Coordinated federal input is needed to help shape the advancement of the FHIR standard in a timely manner and guide the development of new capabilities that meet agency needs. Federal agencies and implementation partners are encouraged to use this draft action plan to help:
- Identify and address common needs.
- Coordinate asks of the FHIR standards community and implementation partners.
- Reuse and advance capabilities that have widespread adoption across industry and federal use cases to help benefit each other’s funded initiatives, avoiding redundancy and duplication of efforts.
The network of federal agencies that touch on health care information technology is vast, from the large department to the small agency. While the next step of coordination at this scale could be daunting, working together and aligning our health IT efforts will be critical to ensure that we are operating as efficiently and cohesively as possible.
The 21st Century Cures Act helped bring needed consistency across the highly fragmented U.S. health care system by encouraging industry to make health information interoperability and use of FHIR API standards a reality.
Thanks to coordinated efforts by federal agencies and willingness of technology developers, FHIR APIs are now widely available across the United States. FHIR adoption rates among health care providers are expected to rise over the next several years as the policy and technical infrastructure needed for FHIR API-based health care delivery systems becomes a reality.
As our nation transitions to a digital health care system, invested communities are discovering new opportunities for using health information technology to advance health care delivery, public health, and research to improve people’s lives.
While this is an exciting development for all, it calls for more proactive alignment and coordination of FHIR advancement activities across federal agencies to ensure that we are operating as efficiently and cohesively as possible.
We hope the considerations and approaches described in the draft action plan help provide a common platform for federal coordination and investments and provide the standards community and industry a clear direction to rapidly advance the FHIR standard.
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