FHIR-up! Advancing knowledge from clinical data through application of standardized nursing terminologies within HL7® FHIR®

Abstract

Health Level 7®'s (HL7) Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources® (FHIR®) is leading new efforts to make data available to healthcare clinicians, administrators, and leaders. Standardized nursing terminologies were developed to enable nursing's voice and perspective to be visible within the healthcare data ecosystem. The use of these SNTs has been shown to improve care quality and outcomes, and to provide data for knowledge discovery. The role of SNTs in describing assessments and interventions and measuring outcomes is unique in health care, and synergistic with the purpose and goals of FHIR. FHIR acknowledges nursing as a discipline of interest and yet the use of SNTs within the FHIR ecosystem is rare. The purpose of this article is to describe FHIR, SNTs, and the potential for synergy in the use of SNTs with FHIR. Toward improving understanding how FHIR works to transport and store knowledge and how SNTs work to convey meaning, we provide a framework and examples of SNTs and their coding for use within FHIR solutions. Finally, we offer recommendations for the next steps to advance FHIR-SNT collaboration. Such collaboration will advance both nursing specifically and health care in general, and most importantly, improve population health.