Why participate in the #FHIR Community? (Individuals & Standards)

Sep 21, 2017

This blog is the first of series I’m going to run in the lead up to the HL7 San Diego meeting looking at the question of why to participate in the FHIR community. For this first blog, I’m going to look at the question of why to get involved in standards at all at the individual level. (subsequent entries in the series: The vendor engagement matrix, Gender Balance and Participation, …) A couple of days ago, I was speaking to a well-known high-profile member of the Australian Health Informatics Community – someone who’s given considerable time to the development of the profession, both academically, and to the community. I asked him why he wasn’t involved in standards development. “Not standards!”, he said, with a definite frown.

Indeed, why be involved in standard development?

In some ways, it’s easier to say why it’s better not to be involved: standards work is slow, and involves arcane and myopic focus on small details in the presence of considerable contention about what should be done. Often must deal with toxic people in difficult circumstances - it’s kind of baked into the process. And progress is slow - actually, it’s often opaque whether you’re making any progress at all. What success you do have is often not appreciated outside the standards community (not appreciated, that is, by the people with money who fund your participation one way or another).

But…

There’s an old saying that anything worth doing is costly… and I think that applies to standards. While the work can indeed be arcane and myopic at times, of all the ways to impact the community, standards development is one of the ways that offers the most leverage. Standards can alter behavior, create entirely new arrangements, and transform industries. In the case of health, good protocols for data exchange – and the data standards that underlie them – can make a substantial difference to health outcomes.

I’d love to have more patient/consumer representatives involved in HL7 (though there’s many other venues where you can contribute to data and protocol standards). But when I talk to potential candidates, most can’t imagine being involved in something with such a long term outlook, where you have to do so much work before you get any outcomes… but that’s how you get really deep and meaningful outcomes. I think that’s sad.

So if you’re interested in contributing to the community, in advocating for change in healthcare: think about playing the long game, the one with the big payoffs, and contribute through the development of standards.