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News release

Ignite the FHIR: Transforming healthcare delivery in Australia

25 August 2022

The Australian healthcare ecosystem is now in a unique position to transform care for both patients and caregivers using much-anticipated Oracle Cerner Substitutable Medical Applications and Reusable Technology (SMART) and Fast Health Interoperability Resources (FHIR) services. Launched in May 2022, the Oracle Cerner SMART on FHIR service provides a standard for the sharing of complex clinical and healthcare data between systems, ultimately resulting in better patient and clinical outcomes by allowing third-party applications to be developed against non-proprietary FHIR industry standards and then embed those SMART applications directly into a clinician’s workflow or a consumer’s experience.

In a collaborative workshop with the CSIRO at the 2022 APAC Regional User Group conference, Michael Draheim, chief clinical information officer for Oracle Cerner Asia Pacific, announced the launch of the FHIR service, describing the key benefits it will bring to both clinical practice and patient engagement, remarking, “FHIR supports and enables the future of interoperable building blocks helping to create a more connected open digital health system for clinicians and consumers.” Joining him on-stage was ‘the father of FHIR’ Grahame Grieve, and Mark Braunstein, professor of the practice emeritus, School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Both Grahame and Mark illustrated the clinical value of FHIR and Cerner Ignite APIs℠, sharing real-world examples of how FHIR supports clinical workflows within the Oracle Cerner EMR. The robust discussion was led by Kate Ebrill, the CSIRO’s business development and product manager, and reflected on possible FHIR-enabled research applications, encouraging workshop participants to consider how the adoption of FHIR could improve the delivery of care within their own organisations.

The availability of SMART on FHIR opens up the ability for third-party applications to ‘plug and play’ with the Cerner Millennium® EMR in common use across a number of Australian states. The Oracle Cerner App Gallery showcases validated third-party applications that use FHIR standards to safely and securely share data in context, providing the ability to quickly install and adopt user-friendly applications for virtual visits, patient education, clinical decision support and specialist areas of care, among others.

The last two years have accelerated the demand for interoperability and intensified the need for access to broad and aggregated datasets that are held in the Cerner EMR, especially to monitor and manage the spread of infection, coordinate vaccination efforts, and now, in the reconfiguration and recovery of services post pandemic.

Austin Health in Melbourne, Victoria, have proven themselves pioneers in the Asia Pacific region as the first to implement the Oracle Cerner FHIR service, with a clear aim to increase internal capabilities to implement new systems swiftly and with ease. New South Wales Health and Alfred Health in Victoria have also signed up for the service and are looking to leverage the FHIR capabilities to enhance their current clinical and consumer experience whilst innovating new solutions.

Oracle Cerner is at the forefront of healthcare data interoperability as one of the founding partners of the HL7 Argonaut Project for FHIR standards in 2014. As the industry increasingly coalesces around the standard as a core expectation of healthcare systems, it’s anticipated that the adoption of Cerner Ignite APIs in Australian healthcare will grow, driving and encouraging an ecosystem of innovative applications across the health network.

Validated SMART on FHIR applications that can be installed in Cerner Millennium can be found on code.cerner.com/apps

Some examples of SMART on FHIR applications that have been validated by Oracle Cerner for installation in Australia include:

  • Microsoft Teams: Provide seamless virtual visits for your telehealth workflows with Microsoft Teams. Allows patients to launch virtual visits from the patient portal or SMS, with no app download required. Healthcare providers can launch visits from PowerChart®. code.cerner.com/apps/microsoft 
  • Tissue Analytics: Makes extensive use of Cerner FHIR APIs to present clinicians with an end-to-end interface for wound management. Clinicians will be able to automatically pull patient demographic information directly into the TA mobile application and acquire images of their patient's wounds. They will be able to access TA's state-of-the-art web application from within PowerChart, so that they can accurately and efficiently track their patients' wound progression in real-time. code.cerner.com/apps/tissue-analytics
  • DoseMe: The world's first easy-to-use precision dosing software designed for clinicians to improve dosing accuracy and patient outcomes by predicting the optimal individualised dose of medications to safely reach therapeutic concentrations quicker. code.cerner.com/apps/doseme

More information on Cerner Ignite APIs and instructions on how to build integration using FHIR standards can be found on code.cerner.com