The healthcare industry depends on easy access to health records. When they are available and understandable, teams can follow patients as they move through the healthcare ecosystem. It enhances the quality of healthcare services, increases transparency, and optimizes operational processes.
Even though the FHIR benefits and importance of the FHIR healthcare standard are evident, it doesn’t make FHIR implementation easier. Providers are sure to face different issues along the way. They need to dig into multiple specifications, ensure data consistency, care about security, and address a range of other challenges.
To help you brace yourself for FHIR healthcare standard implementation, we want to list the main pitfalls to note. Knowing them should make implementing FHIR smoother.
What is FHIR?
H7, an accredited standards development organization, has implemented the FHIR healthcare standard to formulate data exchange rules in healthcare. So what is FHIR in healthcare? It’s a new specification that guides healthcare software vendors on how to ensure interoperability through APIs and connected data. Market leaders, including Allscripts, Cerner Corporation, Epic Systems Corporation, and others, have already adopted an API for the FHIR framework. These vendors cover 83% of hospitals or 58% of clinicians and keep overtaking the market.
The main idea behind FHIR healthcare standard implementations is to simplify the adoption of EHR systems without compromising information integrity. When you follow the FHIR implementation guide, you rely on a trusted model of exchanging data between healthcare apps. As a result, your healthcare organization achieves ultimate interoperability and alignment with previous HL7 best practices.
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What does FHIR implementation means for healthcare stakeholders
Compliance with the FHIR standard is a win-win case. FHIR implementation models yield benefits to patients, clinicians, healthcare providers, and other stakeholders. Despite requiring considerable investment, FHIR integration is worth it. It improves healthcare processes in multiple ways:
- FHIR healthcare standard for patients. Patients enjoy more data-driven and, therefore, high-quality care. Interoperability also enables patients to quickly transmit their data while choosing an insurance plan and gives them better control over shared PHI.
- FHIR healthcare standard for health teams. Clinicians get a detailed patient profile and all healthcare app data collected in one place. It optimizes their work and eliminates the need to switch between multiple devices.
- FHIR healthcare standard for healthcare providers. FHIR implementations make healthcare providers compliant with industry standards, optimize their work, and facilitate the transition to value-based care. Interoperability also enhances productivity, safeguards patient data, reduces costs, and more.
FHIR compliance is life-critical for the healthcare industry. FHIR healthcare standards help to make the system consisting of many third-party apps interoperable and manage big data effectively. The related FHIR implementation challenges are worth the resulting optimization.
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6 FHIR healthcare standard implementation challenges you may face
Since FHIR healthcare standards are a new thing, there are no visible FHIR API implementation case studies. It may be difficult to predict what can go wrong and how to deal with the consequences. Here we have collected six FHIR healthcare service challenges Binariks helps our customers to solve.
#1. FHIR-compliant systems take time and resources
If you are a healthcare organization or TPA that is about to start FHIR implementation, prepare for a lengthy process. You will need to go through multiple stages, from foundational to structural interoperability. Foundational interoperability of FHIR-compliant systems means that you need to meet inter-connectivity requirements in every app you use. Applications must securely exchange data and communicate. Organizational interoperability involves structural changes. Every end-user process and communication between organizations, entities, and individuals must be integrated.
Simply put, FHIR implementation requires a profound analysis of the existing software. You will need to invest in quality research of your current systems to upgrade them. It strains resources but helps to build FHIR healthcare services with the highest level of interoperability.
#2. You have to tailor FHIR integration to specific business needs
Apart from technical optimization, FHIR-compliant systems pursue business goals. Hence, FHIR implementations require skilled business analysts. It’s particularly true for healthcare TPAs. Whereas the demands of traditional healthcare providers overlap, third-party actors have unique business logic and healthcare data uses. For example, they may need to join patient health records and insurance data in a single system. Hence, a technology partner that offers a data exchange system for such an organization will need to research its business logic and data types before building data infrastructure. It creates additional HL7 FHIR integration service challenges.
#3. FHIR security issues are unavoidable
Even if you are HIPAA-compliant and protect patient data, FHIR compliance will make you rethink some security practices. The thing is that adopting FHIR healthcare services, you need to share access to some data stored in your systems. It increases vulnerability and results in additional security challenges. Interoperability raises questions about how to map data so that HIPAA-compliant entities could maintain the same privacy of exchanged data as with other PHI. You will need the multi-tenant model with rich use functions, responsibilities, and permissions. It gives better control over data but is also more difficult to configure.
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#4. Lack of technical expertise
To adopt FHIR services, healthcare vendors and TPAs need either skilled in-house specialists or external help. Since HL7 FHIR services are a relatively fresh standard, the number of people who know how to implement FHIR cloud platforms is limited. Hence, if you start to look for FHIR API proficient engineers, you are likely to face a shortage. Currently, the number of healthcare entities that strive to meet FHIR requirements is increasing, and, therefore, the demand for FHIR APIs specialists is tremendous.
That’s why finding someone to implement FHIR services may be a challenge. Most healthcare companies consider hiring an external vendor as a way to overcome it. A software development agency with relevant experience can create custom open-source solutions meeting FHIR requirements time- and cost-efficiently.
#5. Data consistency across third-party software
Data manageability and consistency are critical for setting up FHIR APIs functionality. The records across connected third-party software must have the same format and match. Only then will you achieve interoperability of cloud FHIR solutions. Building a system with consistent data is much more challenging than it might seem. You will have to analyze potential data issues, develop data processing rules, define compliance metrics, implement data remediation procedures, and more.
#6. FHIR integration process is a never-ending story
In the future, healthcare systems will only get more complicated. Hence, you will have to regularly test the data sharing practices in third-party apps you connect to maintain FHIR security and stay HIPAA-compliant. Although the FHIR standard is international, it’s not compatible with every system you may want to integrate.
How Binariks facilitates FHIR implementation
Binariks is a software development provider that designs software for healthcare companies. The solutions we create are HIPAA-compliant and follow the latest FHIR standards. Our team also assists companies with API integration and helps to achieve interoperability of the systems they use. Check out the projects Binariks has completed here to learn more about how we work.
Final thoughts
FHIR for healthcare software developers entails a range of challenges. It takes effort to master new data interoperability standards and find the best approaches to implement them. Healthcare services and TPAs need to ensure data security, consistency, tailor FHIR services to business needs, and handle other challenges. Nonetheless, the benefits of FHIR overpower the challenges business may meet implementing them and will yield great results in long run.
If you want help with integrating API for the FHIR framework, Binariks is ready to assist you. Contact us to discuss your case and find a reliable tech partner.