Free Daily Headlines :

  • COVID-19
  • Vaccine Info
  • Money
  • Politics
  • Education
  • Health
  • Justice
  • More
    • Environment
    • Economic Development
    • Gaming
    • Investigations
    • Social Services
    • TRANSPORTATION
  • Opinion
    • CT Viewpoints
    • CT Artpoints
DONATE
Reflecting Connecticut’s Reality.
    COVID-19
    Vaccine Info
    Money
    Politics
    Education
    Health
    Justice
    More
    Environment
    Economic Development
    Gaming
    Investigations
    Social Services
    TRANSPORTATION
    Opinion
    CT Viewpoints
    CT Artpoints

LET�S GET SOCIAL

Show your love for great stories and out standing journalism

How fast can a new internet standard for sharing patient data catch fire?

  • Health
  • by Janet Rae-Dupree | Kaiser Health News
  • January 26, 2020
  • View as "Clean Read" "Exit Clean Read"

Medical professionals have been storing personal health information in electronic form for more than a decade, but it is cumbersome for patients to gather disparate computer and paper records scattered across doctors’ offices, hospitals and medical labs.

Wouldn’t life be easier if you could view your full medical history with a few taps on your smartphone?

The consolidation of medical records may be on its way, as technology companies prod the health care industry to embrace an internet-based common standard for storing and sharing patient information. It’s known as FHIR and pronounced “fire” — a catchier way of saying Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources.

Industry analysts say the rapidly growing demand for freer exchange of health care information is creating an electronic health record market estimated to reach $38 billion by 2025. With numbers like that bandied about, it should come as no surprise that Silicon Valley tech giants Apple and Google are lining up for a slice of the pie — as are other technology behemoths, including Amazon and Microsoft. Those corporations, and many smaller companies and startups, offer FHIR-based apps and services to consumers and health industry professionals.

The idea behind FHIR is to share specific pieces of information, such as symptoms, procedures or diagnoses, without passing along entire documents. Each discrete chunk of data has a unique identifier, which makes it possible for patients, doctors and researchers to get the information they need on any device or browser, regardless of where the data is stored.

Proponents of the new standard say it should ensure that health care information can be exchanged seamlessly among providers across the industry — from a urine-testing laboratory in Los Angeles, for example, to a pediatrician in Redding, California.

When tech companies can agree to use an industry standard, the adoption of new technology accelerates: Think Bluetooth or USB. It’s a confusing tangle when that doesn’t happen: Think laptop power cords.

Adoption of the medical record-sharing standard may begin to accelerate with the rollout of a new federal rule this year requiring health care providers that receive payments from the U.S. government — Medicare and Medicaid — to use FHIR-compatible apps for patient data.

FHIR has met considerable resistance, however. Until recently, there were few business incentives and limited advocacy by health care providers to create the necessary demand for FHIR’s adoption, said Micky Tripathi, chairperson of the advisory council of Health Level Seven International, a not-for-profit developer of electronic health information standards that created FHIR.

“Change will come incrementally over time, not overnight,” Tripathi said. “The older standards, though inferior, have the advantage that they are in use today and the cost of ripping and replacing them is not worth the added benefit.”

Some hospitals and medical clinics put the brakes on the very concept of data sharing by engaging in “information blocking” in an effort to retain patients. In 2016, Congress enacted financial penalties to stop them from doing so, but their resistance has not been eliminated.

“There have been roadblocks that prevent innovations and data from being widely shared where it could benefit patients,” said Julia Adler-Milstein, director of the Center for Clinical Informatics and Improvement Research at the University of California-San Francisco.

Beyond its potential to revolutionize medical records requests, FHIR may also provide the first reliable gateway for patient-generated health information from millions of smartwatches, fitness trackers and blood pressure monitors to merge with clinical data in doctors’ offices, people in the industry say.

The need for a standard arose from the incompatibility of electronic health records at medical sites ranging from hospitals and doctors’ offices to urgent care clinics and nursing homes.

Digitizing health records was intended to clean up the chaos of paper-based medical histories, allowing information to be shared more readily. But many practitioners still rely on paper, and among those who have made the digital switch, medical records often lie isolated in electronic silos.

In 2014, Health Level Seven International proposed leveraging how the internet works to break open the silos. FHIR evolved quickly, creating what its product director, Grahame Grieve, calls a “public treasure” of international health information exchange.

At UCSF, FHIR is being used in a study to track the weight of newborns hour-by-hour. UCSF’s Healthy Start program integrates weight data with other information about each newborn to alert doctors when one of them may be struggling.

Established medical technology companies and a host of startups are salivating over FHIR, because eventually it could give them paths to lucrative uses of data, including for personalized medicine, population health and medical genetics as well as in emerging technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence.

“We want to have FHIR in our analytics and machine-learning tools,” Aashima Gupta, Google Cloud’s director of Global Healthcare Solutions, said at a conference in Orlando, Florida, in February.

Tech giants are already striving to benefit from the growing use of FHIR:

  • Microsoft recently released FHIR Server for Azure, its data-on-demand offering, to attract health care clients to its cloud services.
  • Google joined with the American Medical Association in an effort to improve coordination among health care systems with FHIR and develop methods of collecting and managing patient-generated health data.
  • Apple’s Health Records app uses FHIR to let consumers download data from their health care providers.
  • Amazon Comprehend Medical works through Amazon Web Services to offer guidance for health care data specialists using FHIR.

Six big tech companies — Microsoft, Google, Amazon, IBM, Oracle and Salesforce — have also joined to support FHIR and broader sharing of health care data through a government-endorsed project called Blue Button, which is intended to make it easier for patients to view and download their health records.

Consumer advocates and cybersecurity experts warn that personal health information shared on the web could be compromised. They want to make sure the risk is minimized before any widespread rollout of FHIR products. Patients do not have a say in how their health providers store medical information, but patients can request their records be sent in the format they prefer, including paper.

Facilitating access to all that data for both patients and providers without first determining how to keep it secure may open a Pandora’s box that can never be shut, warned David Finn, executive vice president of strategic innovation for CynergisTek, a Mission Viejo, California, and Austin, Texas-based cybersecurity consulting firm.

“We have to change the way we think about data. It is our most valuable asset. But we have not adjusted our thinking about data to how the bad guys think of it,” Finn said. “Until we think about what you could do maliciously with that information, I’m afraid we will not catch up with them.”

This story first published on California Healthline, a service of the California Health Care Foundation .  It was originally published Jan. 22, 2020, by Kaiser Health News, a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

Sign up for CT Mirror's free daily news summary.

Free to Read. Not Free to Produce.

The Connecticut Mirror is a nonprofit newsroom. 90% of our revenue comes from people like you. If you value our reporting please consider making a donation. You'll enjoy reading CT Mirror even more knowing you helped make it happen.

YES, I'LL DONATE TODAY

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Janet Rae-Dupree | Kaiser Health News

SEE WHAT READERS SAID

RELATED STORIES
What we’ve lost, what we’ve learned during our year of COVID
by CT Mirror Staff

On March 6, 2020, Gov. Ned Lamont announced that the first case of COVID-19 had been detected in Connecticut, and within weeks, life as we knew it was a memory. Schools were shut down, universities emptied, businesses shuttered. Those of us who were fortunate enough to be able to work from home set up shop at our […]

Plan to expand child tax credit offers hope along with direct payments
by Lisa Backus | C-HIT.ORG

When her car started making a noise more than a year ago, Chinara Johnson parked the vehicle and hasn’t used it since. As a New Haven mother of 5-year-old twin boys, one of whom is on the autism spectrum, and an 8-year-old daughter, Johnson doesn’t have the money to get the car running properly again. […]

Aid-in-dying bill clears key hurdle with committee passage
by Jenna Carlesso

The bill would let terminally ill patients access medication to end their lives.

With billions in federal relief on the way to CT, legislators assert their role in deciding how to spend it
by Keith M. Phaneuf and Mark Pazniokas

With an unusual bill, state legislators are reminding Gov. Ned Lamont they have significant role in disbursing federal coronavirus relief.

How does the public option bill differ from Gov. Ned Lamont’s health care plan? Here’s a look at the two proposals.
by Jenna Carlesso

With the rising cost of care a central issue this legislative session, lawmakers and Gov. Ned Lamont’s administration have each moved ahead with their own plans aimed at driving down prices.

Support Our Work

Show your love for great stories and outstanding journalism.

$
Select One
  • Monthly
  • Yearly
  • Once
Artpoint painter
CT ViewpointsCT Artpoints
Opinion Right to counsel is just as much a racial justice issue as a housing policy issue
by Pearson Caldwell

Despite the state and federal moratoriums on eviction, nearly 3,000 Connecticut families have faced eviction in the past 10 months. Over half of these families were Black or Latinx, even though these groups combined comprise less than a quarter of the overall population. The stop-gap measures pursued by the state are not enough. Connecticut needs a statewide right to counsel for tenants facing eviction to address the burning housing and racial justice crisis across the state.

Opinion We need justice, not politics
by Richard J. Colangelo Jr. and 13 State's Attorneys

The administration of justice should not be political. Prosecutors must be guided by the evidence in a case and the applicable law, not by partisan, political considerations. Political pressure should never sway a prosecutor’s decision-making.

Opinion Assisted suicide lobby spreads falsehoods to promote systemic ableism
by Stephen Mendelsohn

Proponents of assisted suicide repeatedly spread falsehoods to promote their lethal and ableist agenda.  The February 8 op-ed, “Aid in dying is not assisted suicide” is no exception. Suicide is defined as the act of taking one’s life intentionally.  The person who intentionally ingests a prescribed lethal overdose more closely fits the dictionary definition of suicide than the despondent person who jumps off a bridge.  The desire for suicide is a cry for help, even when redefined as a “medical treatment option.”

Opinion TCI will create a fourth gasoline tax
by Christian A. Herb

The Transportation Climate Initiative, or TCI, calls for a proposed emissions fee on gasoline to help battle climate change. On the surface, supporters say it is a small price to pay to help save the planet; and if you truly believe that this is the case, then you should consider voting for it. Despite the administration’s efforts to go out of their way to not call TCI a tax, the simple truth is that it will only create additional financial hardships on lower- and middle-income families struggling to make ends meet during the pandemic.

Artwork Grand guidance
by Anne:Gogh

In a world of systemic oppression aimed towards those of darker skintones – representation matters. We are more than our equity elusive environments, more than numbers in a prison and much more than victims of societal dispositions. This piece depicts a melanated young man draped in a cape ascending high above multiple forms of oppression. […]

Artwork Shea
by Anthony Valentine

Shea is a story about race and social inequalities that plague America. It is a narrative that prompts the question, “Do you know what it’s like to wake up in new skin?”

Artwork The Declaration of Human Rights
by Andres Chaparro

Through my artwork I strive to create an example of ideas that reflect my desire to raise social consciousness, and cultural awareness. Jazz music is the catalyst to all my work, and plays a major influence in each piece of work.”

Artwork ‘A thing of beauty. Destroy it forever’
by Richard DiCarlo | Derby

During times like these it’s often fun to revisit something familiar and approach things with a different slant. I have been taking some Pop culture and Art masterpieces and applying the vintage 1960’s and 70’s classic figures (Fisher Price, little people) to the make an amusing pieces. Here is my homage to Fisher -Price, Yellow […]

Twitter Feed
A Twitter List by CTMirror

Engage

  • Reflections Tickets & Sponsorships
  • Events
  • Donate
  • Newsletter Sign-Up
  • Submit to Viewpoints
  • Submit to ArtPoints
  • Economic Indicator Dashboard
  • Speaking Engagements
  • Commenting Guidelines
  • Legal Notices
  • Contact Us

About

  • About CT Mirror
  • Announcements
  • Board
  • Staff
  • Sponsors and Funders
  • Donors
  • Friends of CT Mirror
  • History
  • Financial
  • Policies
  • Strategic Plan

Opportunity

  • Advertising and Sponsorship
  • Speaking Engagements
  • Use of Photography
  • Work for Us

Go Deeper

  • Steady Habits Podcast
  • Economic Indicator Dashboard
  • Five Things

The Connecticut News Project, Inc. 1049 Asylum Avenue, Hartford, CT 06105. Phone: 860-218-6380

© Copyright 2021, The Connecticut News Project. All Rights Reserved. Website by Web Publisher PRO