FHIR as the Catalyst for Accelerating Data-to-Insight in Healthcare
Keywords:
FHIR, Interoperable Health Records, Clinical Data Repository, Digital Health, ABDM, NHCXAbstract
Healthcare data is often locked in silos—spread across electronic health records (EHRs), registries, laboratories, and claims systems. This lack of interoperability slows down patient care, complicates compliance, and makes it difficult to generate timely insights. The Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standard, when combined with cloud-native data architectures, provides a path to unify these datasets into formats that are both auditable and analytics-ready.
This paper examines how FHIR accelerates the data-to-insight cycle, drawing on practical implementations in the United States where registry onboarding times dropped from weeks to days, dashboards refreshed in under two seconds, and compliance audits passed with zero critical findings. Beyond technical efficiency, these systems supported preventive screening, immunization tracking, and machine-learning models for predictive care.
The analysis also reflects on India’s Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) and National Health Claim Exchange (NHCX), where FHIR is being adopted at national scale. Together, these experiences suggest that FHIR can serve as the foundation for more interoperable, intelligent, and patient-centric healthcare systems worldwide.
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