FHIR, or Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources, is set to revolutionize the healthcare IT landscape for decades to come, according to Sivakumar Krishnamurthy, Director of Technology at Aigilx Health.

"FHIR is the most efficient way of enhancing interoperability," said Siva. "Health IT companies like Aigilx Health, have grasped the importance of FHIR and understood its capabilities. Sadly, I’m yet to see a large-scale change in other sectors of the healthcare industry."

Siva explains that the last two decades of US healthcare digitization have drowned the entire ecosystem in silos of data, making it difficult to utilize its full potential.

Thanks to US healthcare regulations, FHIR interoperability solutions were recognized as the future and the path forward for unified healthcare enterprise systems. Through FHIR interoperability, healthcare organizations can rapidly standardize disparate data, seamlessly exchange clinical data, and provide analytics-ready FHIR resources to improve patient and population health, among many other benefits.

FHIR differs starkly from its predecessors, says Siva. FHIR is modular and can be used even at the foundational levels of healthcare data. FHIR has changed healthcare interoperability through its API model, enabling plug-and-play innovations previously unavailable because of the complexity of healthcare data. Also, its API structure facilitates complex query processing, a critical asset to enhancing healthcare outcomes.

FHIR enables easy accessibility and secure data sharing. Healthcare analytics, crucial to improving patient and population health is made more efficient with the use of the FHIR standard.

A New York-based HIE was one of the first few to recognize the potential of FHIR as a revolutionary healthcare standard. Aigilx Health’s end-to-end Interoperability platform, RapidFire enhanced the HIE’s operations through FHIR-powered interoperability.

"The quicker healthcare players understand the efficiency and brilliance of FHIR, the more streamlined and efficient our healthcare data exchange will become, raising the value of healthcare results," he concludes. "Those who adopt FHIR without waiting for regulatory deadlines will benefit more and make huge leaps in their healthcare delivery. Even FHIR-enabled healthcare organizations are only just scratching the surface of FHIR’s endless possibilities in areas such as predictive analysis, preventive care, population health reforms, and various other initiatives"

Aigilx Health is a Health Tech firm focused on developing next-generation technology that is robust, easy to use, and futuristic, paving the way for a healthcare ecosystem. The company is located in Rochester, New York, and specializes in building healthcare interoperability products and solutions using the FHIR standard.