HL7 FHIR: An Agile and RESTful approach to healthcare information exchange

Abstract

This research examines the potential for new Health Level 7 (HL7) standard Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR, pronounced “fire”) standard to help achieve healthcare systems interoperability. HL7 messaging standards are widely implemented by the healthcare industry and have been deployed internationally for decades. HL7 Version 2 (“v2”) health information exchange standards are a popular choice of local hospital communities for the exchange of healthcare information, including electronic medical record information. In development for 15 years, HL7 Version 3 (“v3”) was designed to be the successor to Version 2, addressing Version 2's shortcomings. HL7 v3 has been heavily criticized by the industry for being internally inconsistent even in it's own documentation, too complex and expensive to implement in real world systems and has been accused of contributing towards many failed and stalled systems implementations. HL7 is now experimenting with a new approach to the development of standards with FHIR. This research provides a chronicle of the evolution of the HL7 messaging standards, an introduction to HL7 FHIR and a comparative analysis between HL7 FHIR and previous HL7 messaging standards.