Dual Implementation Guides in FHIR and CDA.

Area of Science:

• Health Informatics
• Healthcare Standards Development

Background:

• Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) and Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) are key healthcare data exchange standards.
• Implementation Guides (IG) constrain these standards for specific applications.

Purpose of the Study:

• Align concepts between CDA and FHIR within the Austrian healthcare system.
• Address the limitations of existing approaches for dual standard implementation.

Main Methods:

• Review and discussion of existing approaches for healthcare data standards.
• Evaluation of the IG Publisher tool's suitability for dual CDA and FHIR Implementation Guides.

Main Results:

• Current approaches are not fully adequate for Austria's needs.
• The IG Publisher has been used for CDA IGs but not concurrently for both CDA and FHIR.
• The International Patient Summary (IPS) specifications in CDA and FHIR do not ensure comparability.

Conclusions:

• The IG Publisher is a viable tool for developing Dual Implementation Guides due to its existing CDA support.
• Further development and extensions of the IG Publisher are needed to improve the readability of generated IGs.