After a troubling experience witnessing the lack of coordination and sharing of data between providers in the care of his daughter, Shafiq Rab, M.D., vice president and CIO of Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey, was determined to do something about it. He set out to change the way Hackensack’s data is structured and standardized to pave the way for using Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standards to exchange healthcare information.
The 900-bed HackensackUMC is one of a few dozen early implementers associated with Project Argonaut, a key stakeholder in the HL7 FHIR standard’s development. The basic idea is to allow people to exchange granular data, not just documents and narratives that are difficult to process.