Open Infrastructure for Standardization of HL7® FHIR® Implementation Guides in Austria.

BACKGROUND: HL7 Austria is a non-profit association dedicated to improving electronic data communication and interoperability in healthcare using the HL7 international standards. OBJECTIVES: We aim to provide an open infrastructure to develop, manage, and maintain HL7 FHIR implementation guides. METHODS: We utilize state-of-the-art open-source tooling developed by the FHIR community to support continuous integration. RESULTS: The implementation guides can be published as static HTML websites and maintained using GitHub. CONCLUSION: The solution supports all steps of a standard's lifecycle, from drafting and reviewing to balloting, publishing, and maintenance.

Challenges and Approaches to Make Multidisciplinary Team Meetings Interoperable - The KIMBo Project.

BACKGROUND: Multidisciplinary team meetings (MDTMs) are already in use for certain areas in healthcare (e.g. treatment of cancer). Due to the lack of common standards and accessibility for the applied IT systems, their potential is not yet completely exploited. OBJECTIVES: Common requirements for MDTMs shall be identified and aggregated into a process definition to be automated by an application architecture utilizing modern standards in electronic healthcare, e.g. HL7 FHIR. METHODS: To identify requirements, an extensive literature review as well as semi-structured expert interviews were conducted. RESULTS: Results showed, that interoperability and flexibility in terms of the process are key requirements to be addressed. An architecture blueprint as well as an aggregated process definition were derived from the insights gained. To evaluate the feasibility of identified requirements, methods of explorative prototyping in software engineering were used. CONCLUSION: MDTMs will become an important part of modern and future healthcare but the need for standardization in terms of interoperability is imminent.

Biosignals, Standards and FHIR - The Way to Go?

BACKGROUND: Standards have become available to share semantically encoded vital parameters from medical devices, as required for example by personal healthcare records. Standardised sharing of biosignal data largely remains open. OBJECTIVES: The goal of this work is to explore available biosignal file format and data exchange standards and profiles, and to conceptualise end-to-end solutions. METHODS: The authors reviewed and discussed available biosignal file format standards with other members of international standards development organisations (SDOs). RESULTS: A raw concept for standards based acquisition, storage, archiving and sharing of biosignals was developed. The GDF format may serve for storing biosignals. Signals can then be shared using FHIR resources and may be stored on FHIR servers or in DICOM archives, with DICOM waveforms as one possible format. CONCLUSION: Currently a group of international SDOs (e.g. HL7, IHE, DICOM, IEEE) is engaged in intensive discussions. This discussion extends existing work that already was adopted by large implementer communities. The concept presented here only reports the current status of the discussion in Austria. The discussion will continue internationally, with results to be expected over the coming years.