IHE and HL7 FHIR® continue to collaborate on interoperability initiatives. Firely will host the fifth DevDays event in Amsterdam from November 14-16, 2018. Speakers at the event will discuss a variety of FHIR-related topics, including how IHE and FHIR work together. On November 16, Mauro Zanardini, an Integration and Testing Manager for Consorzio Arsenàl.IT and active IHE integration profile author, will present on XDS and FHIR.
“XDS is the most important profile for the ITI (IT Infrastructure) domain,” says Zanardini. “It enables the sharing of documents between different hospitals and facilities”. During his presentation, Zanardini will discuss the relationship between XDS and the new FHIR-based IHE Mobile access to Health Documents (MHD profile). The first half of the presentation will be include technical discussion and will describe role of IHE in the diffusion of FHIR. The second half will feature exercises that allow participants to interact with APIs based on IHE profiles.
Zanardini will highlight the importance of continued partnership between IHE and FHIR. “IHE adds value because FHIR standards need IHE to be easily implemented. I would like to underline the fact we want to work together with HL7 FHIR in order to make these standards more stable” he says.
A normative release of FHIR is scheduled for January, a date IHE is watching closely. “One of the goals of the IHE ITI technical committee will be to align our documentation with the release of the FHIR standard to ensure we have up-to-date testing for the IHE-Europe Connectathon,” says Zanardini.
Looking forward, IHE will continue to develop profiles based on FHIR. “We are working on some other new profiles that will be based on FHIR standards,” he says. “Within the ITI technical committee, we have received at least four new profiles proposals based on HL7 FHIR this year.”
And IHE and HL7 will continue to explore new ways of collaborating to advance interoperability. In September, the two organizations announced the launch of Project Gemini, an effort to combine the efforts of the two organizations to accelerate the adoption of emerging standards.