#FHIR Updates

Dec 12, 2014

A round of links and news about progess with FHIR Draft For Comment Posted

I have just finished posting the final version on which the current draft for comment is based: http://hl7.org/implement/standards/FHIR-Develop/.

This version of FHIR is our first serious look at what we plan to release as DSTU2 for FHIR. From here, this candidate will undergo a round of comment and testing, including the HL7 “draft for comment”, where HL7 members can comment on the content of the ballot, and also will be tested through several connectathons and other implementation projects. Following that, we will gather all the feedback, and prepare the second candidate, which will be published around the start of April. This will get another cycle of testing, and then we’ll make further changes in response. We’re planning to publish the final version of DSTU 2 around the end of June.

DSTU 2 is clearly going to be a landmark release for FHIR; it will be the first full version that has relatively complete coverage of the healthcare space, and I know that a number of large vendor consortiums, national programs and standards projects are planning on using it for real. Our current plan is that the next version after that will be a full normative ballot. Given the amount of interest FHIR has attracted, and the size of the implementation pool FHIR will have, we expect getting full consensus for the first normative version to be a slow process.

So what I’m saying is that any work people put into reviewing this version of FHIR will be time well invested.

Btw, there are 3 main versions of FHIR posted now:

  1. http://hl7.org/implement/standards/fhir/- DSTU1, the current version of the DSTU
  2. http://hl7.org/implement/standards/FHIR-Develop/- the draft for comment source, which is also the stable version for connectathons from Jan - March
  3. http://hl7-fhir.github.io/- the rolling current version; it runs about 20 minutes behind version control

Project Argonaut

If you’re interested in FHIR, but been living under a rock, you may not have heard about Project Argonaut. The original press release caused a great deal of excitement. My own comments, for the HL7 worker community, got posted to the public at least here and here. I’ll post more information here or elsewhere as it’s available.

Project Argonaut represents a significant validation of the FHIR project, and I thank the leaders of that group (particularly John Halamka, Aneesh Chopra, Arien Malec, Micky Tripathi, and most of all, Dave McCallie) for their willingness to stick their neck out and also - we definitely appreciate this bit - contribute real resources to our project. This kind of validation has certainly made everyone sit up and take notice, and it seems likely that the FHIR community will grow some more in both breadth and depth in the next few months.

FHIR for executives

Rene Spronk has prepared a very useful high level summary of FHIR for executives. (now all we need to do is complete the “FHIR for Clinicians” document - it’s in progress).