SUBSCRIBE
IQVIA Blog Digest
For all the latest industry insights, please subscribe to the IQVIA U.S. blog digest.
-
Americas
-
Asia & Oceania
-
A-I
J-Z
EMEA Thought Leadership
Developing IQVIA’s positions on key trends in the pharma and life sciences industries, with a focus on EMEA.
Learn more -
Middle East & Africa
EMEA Thought Leadership
Developing IQVIA’s positions on key trends in the pharma and life sciences industries, with a focus on EMEA.
Learn more
Regions
-
Americas
-
Asia & Oceania
-
Europe
-
Middle East & Africa
-
Americas
-
Asia & Oceania
-
Europe
Europe
- Adriatic
- Belgium
- Bulgaria
- Czech Republic
- Deutschland
- España
- France
- Greece
- Hungary
- Ireland
- Israel
- Italia
EMEA Thought Leadership
Developing IQVIA’s positions on key trends in the pharma and life sciences industries, with a focus on EMEA.
Learn more -
Middle East & Africa
EMEA Thought Leadership
Developing IQVIA’s positions on key trends in the pharma and life sciences industries, with a focus on EMEA.
Learn more
SOLUTIONS
-
Life Sciences Solutions
-
Healthcare Solutions
-
Medical Device and Diagnostic
-
U.S. Government
Life Sciences Solutions
Bringing together unparalleled healthcare data, advanced analytics, innovative technologies, and healthcare expertise to create intelligent connections that speed the development and commercialization of innovative medicines to improve patient lives.
Learn MoreLife Sciences Solutions
Healthcare Solutions
Accelerate digital innovation to enable smarter decisions that reduce cost, modernize patient and consumer engagement, and improve health outcomes.
Learn MoreHealthcare Solutions
Medical Device and Diagnostic Solutions
Your world is unique – and quite different from pharma. In the U.S., decision-making has shifted from individual physicians to integrated networks--GPOs, IDNs and payers. These groups have heightened the focus on proving your solution’s value, demanding outcomes analyses and putting pressure on pricing.
Learn MoreMedical Device and Diagnostic Solutions
U.S. Government Solutions
For government agencies and organizations at every level—from federal or national to regional and local—Big Data can have a huge impact on public health.
Learn MoreU.S. Government Solutions
U.S. PROGRESS POINT
A curation of IQVIA's best thinking on topics and trends driving change, disruption, and progress in the United States healthcare market.
LEARN MOREU.S. BLOGS
Get the latest insights on our life sciences, healthcare, and medical technology solutions in the United States. Follow our blog today!
LEARN MOREBlog
Interoperability: What is FHIR? - Part 1 in a series
Jun 02, 2021
As we all continue preparations for the upcoming Cures Act deadlines, we at IQVIA would be remiss if we didn’t talk to you about Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources — also known as FHIR. For many in the industry, FHIR standards and their underlying technologies are relatively new, so let’s walk through what they are.
What is FHIR?
Approximately six years ago, the healthcare industry collectively realized that exchanging health information was a considerable challenge, due in large part to the technology available to make those exchanges. To date, there are two predominate technology standards in the industry: HL7 and X12.1 HL7 has been leading most standards around clinical healthcare data for nearly two decades, while X12 has focused more on payer-based administrative transactions.
Experts from across the healthcare industry knew that the healthcare information exchange process needed to be updated by utilizing more modern application technology, and that new methods and standards were needed to truly achieve healthcare information interoperability.
So, the HL7 organization developed FHIR as the new set of standards for the digital exchange of healthcare information via modern technology. The technology is based on newer Representational State Transfer (REST) designs that use HTTP to enable applications to exchange information. For example, two applications that utilize these RESTful technologies adhere to the HL7-defined standards to create a “payload of healthcare data” that’s contained within the messages sent from one application to another. This “payload” helps both applications communicate the data to one another and makes it easier for the recipient application to organize and manage said data.
While this could be new information to you, HL7 is now on their fourth iteration of the standards used to define the content that should be contained within the application-to-application messages. The organization went on to further define various forms of healthcare interactions so that the information sent was more refined and easily identifiable. For example, if a provider is exchanging pharmacy and prescription data with another provider, it’s defined specifically as a “pharmacy/prescription transaction,” offering the users’ a more optimized, efficient, and specialized exchange capability.
Although the list of transaction types is extensive and makes it easier to organize datasets, healthcare information exchange continues to be a challenge within the industry. This leaves patients, providers, and payers at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to the management of their care, the care plans developed for that care, and their overall well-being.
Enter the Cures Act.
When discussing the exchange of data from application to application or organization to organization, you’ll most likely hear about Application Programming Interfaces, otherwise known as APIs. The 21st Century Cures Act stated that healthcare information must be exchanged using standard APIs, and as such, defined the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA) to establish the governance of these standards. Businesses that support federally funded healthcare services will have to begin using APIs that are based on the FHIR standards.
Although the Cures Act has not yet defined a date by which organizations need to adhere to and apply FHIR standards to their healthcare data exchange processes, our IQVIA experts acknowledge the importance of these new standards and encourage our customers to begin preparing for these mandates as soon as possible.
In our next blog, we’ll talk about how you can navigate the complexities of such a task — and how IQVIA can help.
1 HL7 "Health Level Seven" refers to the seventh level of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) seven-layer communications model for Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) - the application level. The application level interfaces directly to and performs common application services for the application processes. Although other protocols have largely superseded it, the OSI model remains valuable as a place to begin the study of network architecture. Website: HL7.org
X12 defines and maintains transaction sets that establish the data content exchanged for specific business purposes. Transaction sets are identified by a numeric identifier and a name. Each transaction set is maintained by a subcommittee operating within X12’s Accredited Standards Committee. Website: X12.org
Catch up on the Cures Act
Are you ready for July 1, 2021?