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HL7 FHIR on Azure: What’s Next: “Bots on FHIR, FHIR + Blockchain”

[Update] For the most up to date information on Azure API for FHIR, visit the “Azure API for FHIR® moves to general availability” blog.


Earlier this year, in June 2017, we released our “HL7 FHIR on Azure” e-book.  It’s been a very popular download and a steady source of architectural and solution guidance (and in some cases inspiration) for the growing HL7 FHIR community of developers. My goal with the development of the e-book was to establish Microsoft’s support for the growing HL7 FHIR community and to make it easier for the community to develop and test their HL7 FHIR solutions and services. I believe we’ve achieved and surpassed that goal.  For that accomplishment, I want to call out and graciously thank our collaborators and go-to technical and functional subject matter experts Howard Edidin and Steve Ordahl for their continued expert guidance and support of the HL7 FHIR community at Microsoft and around the world.  These two gentlemen are highly skilled solution architects and developers who see the possibilities and make them real.

And yes, now it’s getting real.  More real.  We see the opportunity to integrate HL7 FHIR resources and services with Office 365, Dynamics 365, bots, devices and other productivity and line of business solutions.  We are developing proof-of-concepts scenarios to show what the possible looks like and why this has the potential to make healthcare information workers and care givers more productive, collaborative and data driven while enabling them to truly meet their “Quadruple Aim” objectives.  Our content is available in an opensource format on GitHub and can be accessed here.

As the HL7 org works to release the FHIR Standard for Trial Use (STU) version 4 in late 2018 we continue to explore how HL7 FHIR truly enables interoperability of healthcare data and processes across the healthcare ecosystem. As part of our evolving concepts and challenge to dream of the possibilities, Steve recently demonstrated an HL7 FHIR service with the Microsoft Healthbot services at the December 2017 HL7 meeting in New Orleans. We are also exploring additional updates to the ebook including patterns for “SMART on FHIR on Azure”, IoT and Medical Devices, Machine Learning and AI, Dynamics 365 and Office 365, and even a pattern that uses a blockchain foundation for consent and tracking.

One partner that I’d like to highlight is Dapasoft and their Corolar iPaaS (integration platform as a service) for healthcare interoperability on Azure. Dapasoft has released their latest Corolar integration and interoperability solution as a platform service on Azure with full support for the HL7 FHIR resources and services.

Dapasoft works with organizations all across the healthcare continuum. Given their wide variety of healthcare customers they are seeing very interesting use cases and requests from providers, healthcare agencies, and payors looking for FHIR based solutions. Using Corolar iPaaS customers are able to receive HL7 (version 2.x, HL7 version 3.x, and C-CDA) compliant messages in Azure and transform them into FHIR resources for consumption by downstream FHIR compatible applications. Corolar has been successfully used as a FHIR server to support on-premise products and cloud-based patient portal applications. Using Corolar iPaaS is an extremely efficient means for healthcare organizations to enable FHIR capabilities and extend the investments made on their classic on-premise system. You can sign-up for a demo of Corolar iPaaS.

We will continue to build the HL7 FHIR on Azure community and our resources and hope to see you, the reader, at an upcoming FHIR event. In the meantime, make sure to download the “HL7 FHIR on Azure” e-book to learn more.