2023 Annual Report
The highlight of 2023 was the advancement (in collaboration with the Chief Standards Development Officer, Dr. Dan Vreeman) of the 3-Year Plan (2022-2024). The HL7 3-Year Plan is a series of principles, derived strategies and detailed goals and programs in areas of interest.
The five principles are: Focus, Agility, Global Relevance, Community, and Sustainability
This area deals with improving and expanding the HL7 FHIR Accelerator Program™.
In 2023 we developed the Accelerator Blueprint—a complete guide on creating and managing an HL7 FHIR Accelerator—and a series of webinars explaining it. There are currently eight HL7 FHIR Accelerators. They are as follows:
Each year, we continue to mature the FHIR Accelerator Program to standardize processes, including finance, and have added a regularly occurring coordination call for the accelerators to enhance collaboration between them.
An example of the coordination between FHIR Accelerators is the collaboration between CodeX and Da Vinci to use Da Vinci’s Burden Reduction Framework for the oncology use case developed by Codex.
In addition, in collaboration with the CSDO and the FHIR Product Director, we define the basis and operational model for the FHIR Community Process.
This area is about reaching out to communities already working with FHIR in addition to new communities.
May HL7 Working Group Meeting + (“WGM Plus”): In May 2023, we launched our first WGM Plus, improving our reach to implementers and non-technical professionals by offering specific tracks on policy, research and public health. The meeting also included a series of keynotes and non-technical tutorials and presentations. The program featured US federal speakers who discussed their activities and initiatives related to FHIR and a good representation of international representatives and related FHIR Accelerator work. You can find details of the presentations at the event page.
FHIR DevDays 2023: The 2023 FHIR DevDays featured new edition of the best FHIR event in the world: four days full of technical, community and tutorial sessions. This event was held in June in Amsterdam and all the presentations are available at the event page.
FHIR in the Cloud: This is an online or virtual session devoted to explaining to the participants the different offerings for cloud-based FHIR servers and their shared goals and features.
Synthetic Data Event: This is an online conference. It has two main objectives: explain the current use of synthetic data for testing and explore future tendencies. This event was held in August 2023 and a report recapping the event can be found here.
Security Event: This is a two-day virtual event that discussed best practices, options, and problems when implementing FHIR services for sharing clinical information. This event took place in August 2023—see the presentations here.
In 2023, the Standards Implementation Division began work on the Accelerator Reference Implementation (RI) Playbook: How to Create Reference Implementation for FHIR Implementation Guides.
Based on community feedback obtained during 2021 through 2023, the Standards Implementation Division created the requirements and development plan for The HL7 FHIR Foundry. The FHIR Foundry will focus on new implementers, and is intended to be where they can discover and test FHIR specifications blended into a ‘testing ecosystem’. The FHIR Foundry will also house reference implementations for FHIR implementation guides, making them easy to find and test drive. In addition, We also started to plan for the migration of some functionality in the Logica Sandbox to the FHIR Foundry.
This past year, the Standards Implementation Division provided education on the use of HL7 FHIR to CMS to promote FHIR and interoperability to the broader community.
In addition, we started the development of the first of four new credentialing exams as part of the new Credentialing Program: FHIR Foundational Exam.
Finally, the division also launched the Education Partner Program, where HL7 establishes partnerships with organizations that share our passion for creating and delivering HL7 FHIR education. Through a global framework and criteria for achieving partner status, HL7 and its partners will extend the availability of high-quality FHIR training worldwide.
This past year, we welcomed two corporate partners: AEGIS and fire.ly, and one university partner (University of Taipei).
In 2023, our leaders traveled the world to meet with affiliates. Our DCSIO, Diego Kaminker, was invited by AeHIN to visi Indonesia, where he provided a brief FHIR overview to the AeHIN assembly.
Kaminker also participated in the FHIR Connectathons in Chile and Brazil. He met with affiliate members, the general public, and government officials in Santiago, Chile, São Paulo, Brazil as well as Buenos Aires, Argentina where Dr. Vreeman (CSDO) also participated with him in the annual medical informatics event, where they explained the basics of standards development as a team effort.
In addition, Kaminker participated in a training in Kenya organized by our regional partner in Africa (HELINA).
Finally, the Standards Implementation Division finalized our agreement with the World Health Organization (WHO) regarding the use of FHIR for WHO terminology access and WHO-led programs such as the WHO Smart Guidelines.
