The first HL7 India connectathon sees EHR.Network team making a notable presence.

Published by Dileep V S on July 21, 2020July 21, 2020

Our team was present in strength & made a notable impact in the just concluded HL7 India Virtual Connectathon from 3rd to 5th of July 2020. Such an event was being conducted for the first time in India by HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources(FHIR) India. 

The 3 day event was designed to give the participants an understanding of the FHIR standards, resources, profiles and implementation guidelines. It also provided a great hands-on opportunity for the participants in development and testing of FHIR based applications.

The primary objective of our participation was to understand more about the evolving healthcare FHIR interoperability standards adoption in India. We also wanted to contribute to creating a POC for enabling a wide scale adoption of teleconsultation for Covid-19. This track was proposed by NCII – the National Collaborative Initiative for Interoperability.

Our involvement in the HL7 India connectathon

Divya, Aparna and Raksha represented HealtheLife in the event. All of them actively contributed to the Covid-19 Teleconsultation Track over the 3 days of the event and the sprints that led to the event.

Leading upto the event, a series of pre connectathon sprints were organized starting from 15th June. The primary focus of the sprints were to discuss, brainstorm and standardize the use case for the Covid-19 Teleconsultation that the participants were to demonstrate during the event. Our team actively collaborated with the other fellow track members in discussions to understand the use cases and identify the FHIR resources to be used. During these sessions the data to be exchanged was mapped with the appropriate FHIR resources. Their knowledge about clinical data and deep understanding of EHR, gained while developing EHR.Network, greatly helped them understand the concepts and contribute very quickly.

During the actual Connectathon event, our team also attended the other tracks to understand more about the work being done there. The FHIR Starter Track was designed to help participants understand the FHIR ecosystem and the FHIR India Profiling Track worked on profiling the FHIR resources for adoption in India. 

In the Teleconsultation Track, the participants got a very clear understanding about the use case and were able to successfully implement a POC. Senior HL7 India members, FHIR professionals and the Track leads were available throughout the event to guide the participants.  At the end of the event, the team also got an opportunity to demonstrate the POC to Graham Grieve, popularly considered the father of FHIR. He  was impressed with the work and appreciated the efforts put together by the Teleconsultation Track Team that included the Healthelife team members.

A collaboration that benefited all

The organisers and track leads had great appreciation in the capability and commitment of our team members. They in turn got an opportunity to work directly with other FHIR developers and senior members of the FHIR standards development team. Healthelife as a company also hopes to benefit greatly from our team’s improved understanding and abilities in FHIR standards.

We plan to continue this learning process internally to ensure that our EHR platform continues to support FHIR standards and interfaces for India so as to make things even more easier for Healthcare application developers.