Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resource (FHIR) is a standard that describes data elements and formats. It includes an application programming interface (API) for exchanging electronic health records (EHRs) and electronic medical records (EMRs). Created by HL7 International, FHIR helps to deliver a view of health history for patients who see multiple providers in different health plans by compiling all information into a single personal health record that integrates data from different formats.

FHIR is a promising development for data integration in healthcare, which has lagged behind other industries due to the sensitivity and complexity of the data involved.

Although FHIR is the new direction for health information data exchange, many providers still rely on the previous version of the HL7 standard, leaving some providers unsure if they should rewrite existing applications for HL7 v2 or replace them. This is not a concern with IBM Integration. 

The diagram shows how IBM Integration transforms HL7 to FHIR bi-directionally without the need to rewrite existing applications. 

In the example, the core EHR system is acting as the FHIR server. IBM’s application integration software, IBM App Connect, sits at the center of the solution, moving healthcare data from system to system in the same way the heart keeps blood pumping around the human body to vital organs.

IBM App Connect for Healthcare provides pre-built patterns to help organizations migrate from HL7 to FHIR. These patterns provide smart FHIR transformation and routing—including functionality such as a starter message flow and transformation to populate health records—and can also be extended to unlock even more possibilities.

IBM App Connect comes with many pre-built connectors for popular applications both on-premises and cloud native. It can also go one step further and do FHIR “on the wire” to convert FHIR into any other format. This opens up many new opportunities to realize the benefits of FHIR and explore the latest integration methods, including event-driven architectures.

Learn more

Through tight integration between IBM App Connect and IBM API Connect, health IT providers can extend the reach of FHIR for multiple use cases, including the ability to create, manage, secure and socialize FHIR APIs to expand their use both inside and outside the enterprise.

These capabilities are available either as a standalone offering or with IBM Cloud Pak for Integration, which offers all these great capabilities in a single platform with pricing and packaging that can make it cost-effective for any budget.

To learn more, visit the IBM App Connect, IBM API Connect and IBM Cloud Pak for Integration product pages.