Application programming interfaces are all the rage in healthcare and just about every other industry undergoing digital transformation. And with the release of Health Level 7s Fast Health Interoperability Resources 4 earlier this month, the excitement around open APIs, FHIR and data interoperability just kicked into a higher gear.Increasing the use of APIs could represent a dramatic shift in how health data is accessed, extracted, and utilized to improve patient care. APIs can help get patients their data, support information exchange among healthcare facilities, and enable enhanced clinical decision support tool, said Ben Moscovitch, project director of health information technology at Pew Charitable Trusts.Indeed, the 21st Century Cures Act gives the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT the opportunity to advance standards around open API, FHIR included, and to encourage vocabularies and code sets for clinical concepts, Moscovitch added, while the private sector has been making strides of its own.Consider the Argonaut Project, CommonWell Health Alliance and Carequality, which last year reached an interoperability milestone of sorts when the organizations made their connectivity live nationwide such that healthcare facilities that belong to either can now bilaterally exchange CCDs with any other participating member.

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