Happy 10th Birthday FHIR
The HOT (Not So New) Standard
HL7® FHIR® Standard
Celebrates 10th Birthday!
A decade has passed since Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) was initially presented by HL7 International in response to market needs for faster and better methods to exchange the rapidly growing amount of health data. Today, FHIR is widely used in thousands of applications that benefit providers, patients and payers around the world.
The HL7 community developed FHIR in an effort to create a set of base standards for sharing patient health information through the use of several applications. HL7 FHIR has evolved through 4 releases since its initial presentation in 2011. It has grown from a true draft standard with 49 Resources to its current 149 and continues to expand.
Help Celebrate FHIR's Birthday with it's Home: HL7 International!
The Spark that Lit the Flame –
History of FHIR
Originally called “Resources for Healthcare”, the idea behind the FHIR standard began after its creator, Grahame Grieve, experienced a family health emergency that revealed how fragmented modern healthcare was. He committed to working towards solving the problem of connecting healthcare data using online standards, and grew a community dedicated to this cause. Grahame and a small team worked through HL7 International to create an entirely new standard for data exchange.
The World is Catching FHIR
FHIR is widely used in mobile phone apps, cloud communications, electronic health records (EHR)-based data sharing, server communications in large institutional healthcare provider settings and more.
What They're Saying about FHIR
“If no one actually can build an interoperability standard into software, then it won’t work, we won’t have interoperability. I’m really glad to see that after 10 years there’s so much activity – developers everywhere around are using it – so I think we’ve achieved that goal and we are ready for the next 10.” Ewout Kramer, FHIR evangelist, speaker and tutor at Firely - Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands
“HL7 holds and maintains a treasure. The first time in HIT history – everything you need can be based on one standard: FHIR.” Diego Kaminker, HL7 Fellow, Owner/Manager in Kern-IT SRL, Buenos Aires, Argentina
“A pilot of a dozen academic health systems exploded into a nationwide example of a remarkable capability of FHIR. From another iniaitive … Helped to establish the DaVinci Project a unique private payor/provider consortium as a new community of FHIR Implementors. Quickly this led to the FHIR Accelerator project. Today there are six FHIR Accelerator projects.” Charles Jaffe, MD, PhD, FHIR Starter, CEO, Health Level Seven International
“The most obvious immediate benefit (of FHIR) is that it just makes it so much easier to get things done. None of the FHIR Standards would be here without the FHIR Starters. Development of this HL7 Standard created a “community” engaged in pushing the standard forward.” Grahame Grieve, FHIR Starter, Principal at Health Intersections Pty Ltd, Melbourne, Australia
About the Home of FHIR
HL7 International
Founded in 1987, Health Level Seven® International (HL7) is an ANSI-accredited non-profit organization that empowers global health data interoperability by developing standards and enabling their adoption and implementation. In alignment with HL7’s vision of “a world where everyone can securely access and use the right health data when and where they need it”, HL7 is the home of world class standards including HL7® FHIR®, leveraging the latest web standards and applying a tight focus on implementability.