Clinical Scenarios in FHIR

As you know (or should by now!), FHIR has from the outset been an implementer driven standard. The focus has always been on making healthcare interoperability as straightforward as possible, and regular connecathons have been an important part of that process (and we’re up to our 7^th now).

However, it has to be admitted that thus far it has been the ‘techies’ – the ‘geeks’ – that are the main attenders at connectathon – and that’s kind of inevitable, given all the base work that’s needed to make FHIR a realistic standard for exchanging health information.

But FHIR is all about exchanging clinical information, and that means that it has to meet the needs of clinicians (which I use in the widest sense) as well as the technical folk. (And patients too – though that is another story).

At the last Working Group Meeting in Phoenix, we decided that it was time to think about a ‘Clinical Connectathon’ – where the emphasis was on meeting the needs of clinicians delivering care rather than the needs of technical people supporting them – can FHIR  do that?

So, at this WGM in September (held in Chicago) we’re going to have our first Clinical Connectathon (as well as the usual one – sigh). The focus of this event is to allow clinicians to focus on the “clinician to clinician connection” rather then the underlying technical resources that support those interactions.
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