Source: Healthcare Innovation
The Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy/Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ASTP) has published a draft Federal FHIR Action Plan to help guide federal investment and adoption of the FHIR standard. FHIR Release 4 was released in 2018 and has evolved into a mature standard for federal agencies to adopt for their programs, ASTP noted. The plan is part of the larger HHS Health IT Alignment Policy, an effort to align technology standards used under HHS-funded programs. The plan’s primary goal is to align federal agencies’ adoption and use of FHIR around a set of essential components and capabilities that agencies have implemented or are planning to implement in the next two years. Many of these components are mature and already being used in production. The draft action plan builds off the work of a FHIR Work Group created in 2019 and provides additional direction now that FHIR is being used more broadly by federal agencies to help facilitate shared decision-making, improve care coordination, and deepen patient engagement.