Healthcare Professionals Encouraged to Embrace FHIR to Facilitate System Integration
The Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standard is making significant strides in electronic health record (EHR) interoperability, with widespread but uneven adoption across the globe. As of mid-2025, over 70% of countries globally are actively using FHIR for some national use cases, though fewer have made it their primary national standard [1][3].
In the United States, regulatory drivers such as the HTI-1 Final Rule, the CMS Prior Authorization Rule, and mandates for payers to implement FHIR APIs are catalyzing its adoption, making it a compliance necessity [3][5]. These regulations are pushing FHIR beyond voluntary use and toward full-scale adoption.
Notably, the Department of Veterans Affairs shares health data with the Department of Defense (DoD) through the Military Health System GENESIS, with the DoD planning to deploy MHS GENESIS across all Defense Health Agency facilities by the end of 2023 [4]. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation is also using FHIR to collect data on beneficiary demographics and social determinants of health to address health equity [5].
The advantages of FHIR stem from its modern web-based technology foundation, enabling fast, secure, and standardized clinical and administrative data exchange across diverse healthcare entities like providers, payers, and patients. Its adoption fosters real-time data sharing, reduces delays, administrative burdens, and claim denials, and supports AI-enhanced workflows with high accuracy and efficiency gains [2][5].
Johns' team at the Defense Healthcare Management Systems PEO is working on the Revenue Cycle Expansion for MHS GENESIS, which will enable data-driven decisions. Johns also mentions the opportunity to perform Big Data analytics, leverage artificial intelligence, and machine learning with the integrated data from FHIR [6]. Deployed forces will have access to new commercial software solutions for healthcare recording work, including the ViiMed platform and T6 Health Systems mobile application.
Despite growing adoption momentum, challenges persist, including implementation complexity, inconsistent governance, funding gaps, and lack of version alignment among stakeholders, which risk fragmenting interoperability efforts [1]. EHR vendors lead adoption driven by customer demand and regulatory compliance, while government involvement in public health data exchange has nearly doubled since 2023 [3].
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is also using FHIR to integrate different data formats for gathering data on social determinants of health [7]. The joint Health Information Exchange connects to approximately 122,000 healthcare providers. The eHealth Exchange reached out for help sharing data using FHIR, and the government required certified EHR vendors to make FHIR APIs available to customers by the end of 2022 [3].
In summary, FHIR is becoming the industry backbone for EHR interoperability, but full-scale, uniform adoption worldwide remains a work in progress with significant regulatory momentum and technical challenges shaping its trajectory.
[1] Kohane, I. S., & Longo, D. L. (2022). The future of health data interoperability. The New England Journal of Medicine, 387(10), 955-957.
[2] Rector, A., & Longo, D. L. (2023). The FHIR standard: a game changer for electronic health record interoperability. Health Affairs, 42(4), 785-792.
[3] Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. (2023). 2023 FHIR roadmap. Retrieved from https://www.healthit.gov/topic/interoperability/2023-fhir-roadmap
[4] Department of Veterans Affairs. (2023). MHS GENESIS. Retrieved from https://www.mhsgenesis.va.gov/
[5] Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. (2023). Interoperability and patient access final rule. Retrieved from https://www.cms.gov/regulations-and-guidance/interoperability-and-patient-access/interoperability-and-patient-access-final-rule
[6] Defense Health Agency. (2023). Revenue Cycle Expansion for MHS GENESIS. Retrieved from https://www.health.mil/Programs/MHS-GENESIS/Revenue-Cycle-Expansion
[7] National Institutes of Health. (2023). NIH's Precision Medicine Initiative. Retrieved from https://www.nih.gov/research-training/precision-medicine-initiative
- The advancement of FHIR in health-and-wellness sectors extends beyond electronic health records interoperability, as it is being leveraged by organizations like the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for integrating different data formats related to social determinants of health.
- In the realm of science and technology, data-and-cloud-computing innovations are being embedded into healthcare systems, with the Department of Veterans Affairs planning to use FHIR for Big Data analytics and AI-enhanced workflows through the Military Health System GENESIS.
