Connecting Healthcare Across Supply Chains
APIs on FHIR are redefining how healthcare systems connect, exchange data, and deliver better patient outcomes. They combine modern API technology with the global Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standard to enable secure, standardized, and fast healthcare data sharing across systems and borders.
API technology is the disrupter-in-chief of many sectors, especially retail and banking. Some of this disruption is driven by regulation that will inevitably be replicated: from open banking to open insurance, open pensions, and so on. The healthcare industry is one of the latest to expand its traditional reach and create new ways to connect across supply chains by opening up APIs.
Healthcare’s digital transformation has been spurred by FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources), the industry standard for exchanging healthcare data. As PSD2 is to banking, these regulations ensure a standard structure of information, making data accessible and readable outside of a central system. First trialed in the United States, FHIR has quickly expanded as an international specification to resolve administrative and clinical challenges in healthcare networks around the globe, making a notable impact in the US.
From Regulation to Reality
While regulation often sets the stage, the real magic happens when technology moves beyond compliance into value creation. For healthcare, this means more than simply meeting data standards—it’s about enabling better care, smoother workflows, and more connected patient journeys.
Consider how banking APIs have reshaped the customer experience, allowing real-time payments, account aggregation, and intelligent financial insights. The same principle applies in healthcare: APIs on FHIR can securely link disparate systems, empowering healthcare providers and patients alike. By ensuring data moves effortlessly between hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, insurers, and even research institutions, FHIR sets the foundation for true healthcare interoperability.
FHIR Solutions In Practice
The possibilities aren’t hypothetical—they’re already happening. In open healthcare platforms, APIs are authenticating healthcare providers, enabling referrals to both clinical and community-based services. The UK’s NHS is in the beta stage of building a national API network—a system where registered patient records can be securely located and accessed by any authorized physician, care worker, or healthcare administrator, provided the patient has given consent.
The implications are profound. Imagine walking into any urgent care facility or hospital, even in a different country, and having a doctor instantly access your full medical history with a single API call. Seconds later, another API call could securely send your updated prescription to a pharmacy—eliminating errors, speeding up treatment, and ensuring continuity of care.
Better Patient Experience
In industries like banking, open APIs have redefined customer experience. In healthcare, the same transformation is underway. Patients are gaining the power to make informed decisions about their treatment, based on easy access to their aggregated medical history. And it’s not just patients who benefit—researchers, public health officials, and policymakers can securely analyze anonymized data to inform population health strategies, pandemic responses, and clinical innovation.
There’s also powerful cross-industry potential. For example, private and public healthcare institutions can tap into insurance APIs to verify coverage instantly, ensure accurate billing, and prevent claim disputes. This level of healthcare interoperability minimizes paperwork, reduces delays, and improves trust across the entire ecosystem.
Why FHIR Is Winning Over Developers and Providers
One reason FHIR adoption is accelerating is its simplicity and cost-effectiveness. It’s free, open, and designed for fast implementation—earning its “fast” label for a reason. Developers appreciate its human-readable serialization format, which means they can build and integrate new interfaces in days, not months. For healthcare organizations, this translates into quicker deployments, lower costs, and faster returns on investment.
The global growth of FHIR signals that healthcare providers are eager to embrace APIs as a practical solution to the industry’s complexity. It’s not about replacing existing systems—it’s about connecting them in a way that’s secure, standardized, and future-proof.
Prolifics Can Help
At Prolifics, we’ve seen firsthand how transformative APIs on FHIR can be. Our work spans healthcare clients across North America and the UK, including organizations like BMI Healthcare and GSK. Drawing on deep experience with API architectures, integration platforms, OAuth security, and cloud deployments, we’re helping healthcare organizations unlock the full potential of FHIR.
We’ve even begun repurposing assets from our open banking projects—leveraging lessons from another highly regulated industry to accelerate healthcare interoperability initiatives. This includes creating FHIR sandboxes where healthcare organizations can experiment, prototype, and validate their API strategies before rolling them out at scale.
The Road to Global Healthcare Interoperability
So, are we close to achieving global healthcare interoperability? The short answer: closer than ever, but still on the journey. Technical standards like FHIR have solved much of the “how” when it comes to connecting healthcare systems. Now, the remaining challenges are largely operational—governance, consent management, cross-border data sharing laws, and aligning incentives across public and private stakeholders.
But momentum is building. Governments are recognizing the value of open standards. Healthcare organizations are increasingly API-literate. And technology partners like Prolifics are providing the architecture, security, and integration expertise to make large-scale API network deployments not just possible, but practical.
The Bigger Picture
The endgame is a healthcare ecosystem where APIs work quietly in the background—instantly connecting the dots for clinicians, patients, researchers, and insurers. A patient’s data could travel securely and seamlessly across hospitals, GP clinics, pharmacies, and labs—no matter the software vendor or geographic location. Emergency care would improve, chronic disease management would become more personalized, and administrative inefficiencies would be drastically reduced.
In short, APIs on FHIR are not just a tech trend—they’re a foundational step toward a healthcare system that is more connected, more efficient, and more human-centered.
What’s Next?
For healthcare leaders, the question is no longer if FHIR-based healthcare interoperability will happen—it’s how quickly you can get there and how prepared your organization is to lead, not follow.
If you’re ready to explore what APIs on FHIR can do for your organization—whether you’re looking to streamline provider workflows, improve patient outcomes, or unlock new cross-industry opportunities—Prolifics can help you navigate the journey with proven expertise and innovative solutions.
