Photo: HIMSS Media
Health Level Seven International has announced the launch of its new Caliper FHIR Accelerator implementation community.
The multi-stakeholder initiative aims to improve how data from medical and personal health devices is exchanged, integrated and used across all care settings and users. The goal is to bring data exchange standards from theory to real-world practice, according to HL7.
WHY IT MATTERS
Through the Caliper Accelerator program, medical device vendors, healthcare providers and IT developers will collaborate to advance device safety and innovation through standardized informatics and artificial intelligence integrations, HL7 said in its announcement last week.
The structured initiative will build on the Gemini Device Interoperability Program, a partnership with Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise International, which combines HL7's data standards with IHE's guidance for health IT and medical device manufacturers.
Caliper participants, most of which contribute via a paid-membership model, will vote on project priorities and governance, will take a hands-on approach, and will actively steward the Gemini program to ensure that device standards, like Service-oriented Device Point-of-care Interoperability (SDPi), are compatible across different global frameworks, HL7 said.
They'll also use Gemini's testing tools to prove healthcare devices and systems meet high-fidelity data standards critical for AI and safety-critical systems.
Participants will attend FHIR communication testing events, where they will connect their physical devices or software to others' and pilot interoperability workflows in clinical settings, including intensive care units and home-based care environments.
Workgroups within the community will also meet regularly to identify tech gaps, HL7 said.
HIMSS, which is the parent company of Healthcare IT News, is also a collaborator.
THE LARGER TREND
The adoption of FHIR as a contemporary data exchange standard has accelerated while policies like the 21st Century Cures Act that created the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement have created regulatory infrastructure.
Real-world information sharing, however, is still far more fragmented, according to Karthikeya Rekulapalli, a data architect at Midland Memorial Hospital and consultant at consulting firm Cardinal Solutions Tech.
"This infrastructure is delicate: A single case-sensitivity error in a file name, a mismatched patient identifier, or a version mismatch during a system upgrade can cause entire workflows to stop processing messages," he told Healthcare IT News last week.
The majority of data transfer between hospital systems is still powered by HL7 v2 messaging, while the shift to modern APIs and real-time data access is uneven. Community hospitals and rural systems are lagging behind large academic centers, Rekulapalli said.
Making interoperability more than just a buzzword requires the healthcare industry, as well as health systems, to overcome some challenges from technology to licensing and data governance, he said.
ON THE RECORD
"Caliper members play a vital role in advancing standards-based, interoperable health device technologies," said HL7 leaders in the announcement.
"They help identify and prioritize the needs of all stakeholders in the implementation community and resource and oversee the projects that bring this work to life. Our members represent device users – both clinicians and individuals, industry developers and integrators, public agencies/regulators, clinical engineering, academic research and more."
Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.
