Patient — Physician collaboration on FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources)

With electronic health record adoption now far advanced the focus has largely shifted to interoperability - the ability to meaningfully share data among these systems and to collect and share data with devices, sensors, apps and tools increasingly available to patients. At the same time new forms of reimbursement encourage greater collaboration among providers and their patients. These twin imperatives have led to the rapid development and adoption of FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources), a more facile approach to representing and sharing health data based on familiar, standard technologies widely used by other industries and a potential universal health app platform. This paper explains FHIR and the impact it will potentially have on patient-physician collaboration.