FHIR is an international standard for exchanging information between systems, developed by HL7 International. It is being used alongside other standards in a number of national projects to support the structured exchange of information between IT systems.

HealthShare Health Connect integration platform already supports international HL7 FHIR Profiles, Jon Payne, manager, sales engineering at InterSystems, said: "Interoperability using the HL7 FHIR standard is the cornerstone around which the NHS will build the joined-up IT systems that it needs for integrated health and care."

InterSystems' continued commitment to the NHS means organisations using Health Connect will be able to take advantage of NHS FHIR profiles as they become available - at no additional cost.

"Any organisation with a supported version of Health Connect will be able to draw down these integration components free of charge. That means we will be providing free capabilities to organisations that have may otherwise have to pay for them elsewhere."

Amongst the components being made available is support for the Transfer of Care Initiative, which is promoting the use of standards to send discharge letters and outpatient clinic letters from hospitals to GPs, as well as support for GP Connect, which is supporting the exchange of GP clinical information with other systems. Specific components for other use cases such as Child Health, eReferrals and Care Connect will also be included in this initiative.

Given that the chosen transport mechanism from NHSD for FHIR message exchange is Message Exchange for Social Care and Health (MESH), an accredited MESH adapter is also freely available, which can be used as a stand-alone component to support trusts for other MESH messaging needs.

"InterSystems wholly supports these developments, which will make it quick and easy for them to benefit from the work we have done with others to get data flowing in support of patient care" he adds.

InterSystems has a history of supporting open initiatives in health and care. It was a founder member, and now with a co-chair representative, of the INTEROPen collaborative of suppliers, standards bodies and health organisations that has supported the creation, adoption and implementation of standards in healthcare.

It has built support for standards including HL7 FHIR into its product suite and is working on early-adopter and full roll-out projects for the NHS initiatives that use them. Both Transfer of Care and GP Connect are using the latest version of the HL7 FHIR standards which is supported by the latest release of Health Connect.

"We hope that through this development and collaboration we will provide a significant boost to interoperability" he confirms.

InterSystems customers who want to use the HL7 FHIR integration resources should contact their InterSystems representative. These products will be made available as curated content on request.

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