The ability for Healthcare ITsystems to communicate with one another in a meaningful way (interoperability) has been an issue for decades in healthcare. Initially, standards were designed to connect large Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems, most of which were designed to address the insurance and billing needs of patients and hospitals. These EMR systems have had limited success for providing patients and clinicians the integrated view of healthcare information they need to make accurate diagnoses and treatment decisions.

Until now... The birth of search engine technology, distributed web based systems and the diffusion of mobile healthcare devices into our everyday lives has made it possible for a much more mature, complete integration of not just our patient records but everything related to our healthcare needs. Ideally we, as patients and clinicians who treat us, would like to ask a healthcare question and have the various healthcare electronic systems "serve up" all the data and information related to that clinical question and eventually, through Artificial Intelligence (AI) suggest some diagnoses and treatments.

This is the promise of the new FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) Standard.

The topics covered in this "Class on FHIR" course are:

• The Issue with our current method of connecting Healthcare IT systems

• The MPI (Master Patient Index) Issue

• The document based approach of current EMR systems

• What we really want and need

• The enabling technologies (Web, Search , Mobile devices)

• What is an API (Application Programming Interface)?

• FHIRand API

• How FHIR can make everything better.

This course includes:

• Video lectures walking you through the various aspects of Interoperability

• Quiz to test your retention

• Significant number of resources to do a deeper dive into his topic.

Whether you are new to the healthcare profession or looking to advance your career in healthcare or are an established healthcare professional eager to learn more about the potential of this new technology, this course is perfect for you. The course is targeted for those unfamiliar with technical jargon but still wanting to learn about this new technology and its application to healthcare organizations.

My approach to teaching is a very pragmatic one explaining difficult concepts in an “easy to understand” format. This and my other courses are founded on my 35 years experience in the healthcare industry growing my career from development engineer through president. It is also based on my 15 years teaching business and healthcare at the graduate level at 2 Universities.