HealthTech is rapidly changing to improve patient care, streamline processes, and enhance overall efficiency within the healthcare ecosystem. As a result, adopting interoperability standards such as Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) and Smart on FHIR app development is central to this evolution.

You may wonder what Smart on FHIR stands for, so read on and let me explain. In the following paragraphs, you will learn about the significance of these advancements and how Smart on FHIR developers impact healthcare delivery and patient outcomes.

Table of Contents

What is FHIR?

First, let’s answer this question before going to Smart on FHIR. FHIR is a contemporary norm for the electronic exchange of healthcare data. It offers a structure for presenting and exchanging clinical data among diverse healthcare systems, ensuring easy interoperability. Unlike earlier standards, FHIR is founded on modern web technologies such as RESTful APIs, JSON, and XML, which makes it more adaptable, expandable, and user-friendly.

Furthermore, FHIR is designed with a modular approach, which enables the representation of specific clinical data elements called resources. The resources can cover several clinical and administrative concepts, such as patients, practitioners, medications, observations, and procedures. With the standardized representation of these data elements, exchanging information between healthcare applications and systems is easier with FHIR, thus improving data interoperability and usability across the healthcare ecosystem.

What is Smart on FHIR?

So, the question is: What does smart on FHIR stand for, or what is smart on FHIR? Smart on FHIR takes healthcare interoperability to the next level by using the FHIR standard to develop healthcare applications that run within any FHIR-compliant environment. Essentially, Smart on FHIR applications are web-based applications that seamlessly integrate with electronic health records (EHRs), health information exchanges (HIEs), and other healthcare systems. And what’s there to gain? Clinicians, patients, and other stakeholders can access and interact with health data more effectively and user-friendly.

Smart on FHIR apps use the RESTful APIs of FHIR to access, modify, and share health data instantaneously to facilitate dynamic collaboration with clinical systems and workflows. In addition, these apps are generally built by Smart on FHIR developers to be light, modular, and user-friendly. Thereby, they are ideal for several scenarios, such as clinical decision support, patient engagement, and remote monitoring.

Smart on FHIR Applications

Smart on FHIR applications have the potential to improve healthcare delivery across various domains, and their applications and their functionalities are discussed below:

Electronic Health Records (EHR) Integration: Applications based on Smart on FHIR technology can easily integrate with current EHR systems. This allows healthcare providers to directly access pertinent patient data and clinical decision-support tools without interrupting their workflow. These applications can also enhance the usability and efficiency of EHR systems for patient care and outcomes.
Patient Engagement and Empowerment Tools: Smart on FHIR applications patients to participate more actively in their healthcare by giving them access to their health records, treatment plans, and educational materials. As a result, patients can communicate more effectively with their healthcare providers, easily adhere to medication, and manage their chronic conditions.
Clinical Decision Support Systems: These applications can provide real-time reminders, alerts, and recommendations to help optimize patient care and safety. They can also assist clinicians in making evidence-based decisions at the point of care via clinical decision support algorithms and guidelines and the latest clinical evidence.
Remote Patient Monitoring Solutions: The Smart on FHIR technology can achieve remote monitoring of vital signs, symptoms, and adherence to patients’ treatment plans. These applications can integrate wearable devices and home monitoring systems to provide real-time information to clinicians, allowing them to detect complications early and intervene timely.
Telehealth and Virtual Care Platforms: Applications built on Smart on FHIR technology can support telehealth and virtual care programs by providing a secure platform for communication and collaboration between healthcare providers and patients. Such applications have the potential to enable virtual consultations, remote diagnosis, and remote monitoring of patients, thereby increasing accessibility to healthcare services and enhancing care coordination.

Conclusion

Smart on FHIR apps are a major advancement in health technology. They have all the possibilities to transform healthcare delivery and enable clinicians and patients to achieve better health outcomes by leveraging the interoperability capabilities of the FHIR standard. In addition, the future of Smart on FHIR applications looks promising for further improvement in healthcare delivery and patient care across the globe, particularly as healthcare stakeholders continue to embrace innovation and collaboration through HL7 Smart tools.