“Using APIs “without Special Effort”
The ONC’s Cures Act Final Rule (Cures Rule) supports patients’ and providers’ access to electronic health information (EHI) through Health Level Seven (HL7®) Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR®) application programming interfaces (APIs). FHIR is ready for prime-time and the Cures Rule requires certain developers of certified health IT to provide a certified, FHIR API to their customer base by December 31, 2022.”
“To ensure these certified APIs can be accessed and used “without special effort”, the Cures Rule API Conditions and Maintenance of Certification contains a specific requirement that “service base URLs” – otherwise known as “endpoints” – must be published for all customers and in a machine-readable format at no charge. These electronic endpoints are the specific locations on the internet that make it possible for an app to know where to go to access health information on behalf of the users.”
“ONC developed the Lantern tool to monitor the nationwide implementation of FHIR APIs and to learn how easy it was to obtain their endpoints. Throughout the development of the Lantern tool, ONC worked with stakeholders to develop consensus around a standard format to publish these endpoint lists. This work identifies endpoint data that should be made available in order to facilitate interoperable linkages to these endpoints.”
“Current Guidance on FHIR Endpoint List Publication
The Lantern tool consumes public endpoint information, tests the accessibility of these endpoints, and then reports capability information to its public-facing dashboard. Through Lantern, we found variability in the publication of public endpoint lists, which makes it difficult for Lantern and other potential users of endpoints to consume the information in a systematic manner.”
“To help ensure greater consistency in data publication across developers, in May 2021 ONC recommended that health IT developers certifying to the new FHIR-based API certification criterion use the FHIR Endpoint resource to publish endpoint lists (for more information see the API Conditions and Maintenance of Certification requirements). The more health IT developers that follow this approach the more standardized and consistent the ingestion of endpoints can be, without the need for potential customizations to process individual lists…” Read the full article here.
Source: Shining a Light on FHIR Implementation: Progress Toward Publishing FHIR Endpoints – By Wes Barker, Vaishali Patel and Jeff Smith, February 1, 2022. ONC Health IT Buzz.
