MANDALUYONG, Philippines – The Standards and Interoperability Lab – Asia (SIL-Asia) hosted ‘FHIRing up Digital Health,’ a symposium on Health Level Seven International – Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (HL7-FHIR) in the Philippines last 24 May 2019 at the Asian Development Bank.
The symposium gathered around 40 participants from various Electronic Medical Records (EMR) Providers, Health Information Technology (HIT) Providers, government (health and science technology), academe, and select hospitals. In this event, SIL-Asia introduced HL7-FHIR as a new standard that can be used in making health information systems interoperable. Overall, the symposium aimed to explore how HL7-FHIR can contribute to improving the digital health ecosystem in the Philippines.
HL7-FHIR is the emerging standard in health data exchange and sharing. HL7-FHIR uses the power of the web to exchange data across disparate platforms and technologies. Health Information Exchanges, Hospital Information Systems, and even large tech companies like Google and Apple are also using HL7-FHIR in managing health data. Because of the ease that comes with using this standard, HL7-FHIR has driven the development of more health-related applications outside of the traditional Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) or Electronic Health Records (EHRs).
The Philippines has just passed the Universal Healthcare Act. An important component of the act is anchored on the development of service delivery networks (SDN) in the whole country. With these SDNs, patients are expected to have a primary care provider, but healthcare should be available anywhere the patient is. For this model to work, it requires that health information systems deployed in facilities must easily communicate with one another and share patient data.
For more information, SIL-Asia’s briefer on HL7-FHIR is available here. SIL-Asia’s FHIR server may also be accessed for testing purposes.
The Regional Interoperability Workshop organized by AeHIN at the sidelines of the Global Health Research Forum last August 2015 gave birth to the concept of Standards and Interoperability Lab – Asia. The regional lab aims to serve as a template of labs in each country that will later form into the Community of Interoperability Labs (COIL).
