Continuing with NZHIT's focus on standards, we take a look at HealthOne's FHIR engine. Rachael Page, General Manager of HealthOne tells us why they used FHIR and how it has helped build an advanced data extraction service.

In 2015 HealthOne made the brave decision to lead the market and adopt the newly emerging FHIR standard for health information exchange. This was controversial at the time as it was well before FHIR was widely adopted but has proven to be the right decision with FHIR now established as the health industry standard for data exchange.

Prior to adopting FHIR, HealthOne relied on extracting information from the cooperating products. While this approach only worked with a couple of market leading products it did cover all the primary care GP and Pharmacy sites.  

This model enabled HealthOne to quickly establish a new authoritative health record for all patients across the five DHBs whole of the South Island. This was a core mission for HealthOne when it was established following the Christchurch earthquakes in 2011.  

The HealthOne record is carefully focussed on providing a summary record showing as many of the patient’s interactions as possible through their healthcare journey. However, the catchment of data sources extending beyond GP and Community Pharmacy, became constrained by the reliance on maintaining the extractor service with so many sites and products.

The new FHIR standard held promise for integration enabling the widest possible participation in the shared care records. HealthOne committed to a visionary change in technical direction and developed the new API using the FHIR standards.  

Today HealthOne is enabled by the class leading mature HL7 FHIR API Interface, and an advanced data extraction service to ensure the highest quality information is consistently updated into the secure FHIR database. This means the shared record is always fast, reliable, and accessible - even if a contributing system is offline.  

The FHIR API Interface is fully tested, documented, and has a robust conformance process established.  

For Developers who want deeper information, contact [email protected] for access to our Wiki.

About HealthOne

HealthOne carefully collects and holds a summary record including a standard set of demographics and clinical items (e.g. prescribed and dispensed medications, allergies and alerts, adverse reactions, observations, conditions, shared care plans, encounter notes and classifications from community providers).

The information is securely stored, with strict privacy controls and only displayed to clinicians directly involved in a patient care via a highly secured health portal.

The HealthOne record is virtually real-time – the shared record is usually updated by the time the patient has left the doctors carpark!

To promote the highest standards of privacy & security HealthOne pro-actively audits every access and validates every user’s permission to view the record.  This level of audit and accountability is unmatched by any other health service in New Zealand.

For more information please contact:

[email protected]

General Manager - HealthOne

‍

‍