Why is it important for Clinicians to become actively involved in FHIR®?

The HL7® FHIR® standard is evolving to the point where it is feasible – if not necessary – for clinicians to become actively involved in FHIR®.

HealH® has educational resources – there is aFHIR® fundamentals course for example.

1. Engaging with the FHIR® community (which is extremely vibrant!).
   • Joining your local HL7® Affiliate is always a good start. These are the folk with a good understanding of all HL7® standards, including FHIR®.
   • The HL7® Patient Care committee is the group responsible for the clinical resources.
   • There is a FHIR® chat where you can get questions answered in near real-time, and all previous conversations are available for searching.
2. Doing is using tools like clinFHIR and forge to actually build FHIR® artifacts. clinFHIR in particular is aimed at the clinical user and has a distinctly educational focus, whereas forge is intended as a functionally complete profiling tool for production use.
   • There are ways to get involved and become active in the community. FHIR® events are held regularly and you can join the Patient Care user group of HL7.
   • The May working group meeting is in Madrid this year, and there will be a Clinicians on FHIR® day included in the event.

It is very important for clinicians to become actively involved in FHIR® and health IT projects will benefit from having end users involved earlier in the process.