April 2020

Benefits of FHIR (Infographic)

Benefits of FHIR (Infographic)

When Prolifics engineers first learned about HL7’s FHIR standards, in response to the healthcare industry’s challenge with FHIR interoperability and healthcare data interoperability, ideas began pouring into our Innovation Center. The result was our Quick FHIR solution that goes beyond simple FHIR API integration with your existing systems, adding a layer of security plus AI and FHIR and machine learning in healthcare data to help you better manage and analyze your information.

This infographic provides an at-a-glance description of the benefits of FHIR to your health organization. Be sure to click to see the large version.

Who Benefits from FHIR?

Developers

FHIR for developers builds on, co-exists with, and leverages HL7’s earlier product lines (HL7 v2, HL7 v3, CDA) while using common web standards like RESTful services, XML, JSON, HTTP, and OAuth. Developers looking to explore FHIR healthcare standards may find themselves in familiar territory. They will also find the following appealing:

  • Open-source FHIR tools that are free to use
  • Comes with out-of-the-box FHIR interoperability
  • Base resources can be used as-is or adapted as needed
  • Integrates seamlessly with popular web service technologies

Patients

FHIR for patients makes health data accessible, giving individuals more control over their healthcare decisions. From diet and exercise to treatment and medication, more data means smarter consumers. Patient access to health data through FHIR:

  • Allows new technologies to aggregate health data, for example, Apple’s Health app
  • Eliminates duplicate tests and services, reducing costs
  • Prevents errors from missing or incomplete patient data, supporting better outcomes

Researchers

FHIR for researchers has the potential to transform clinical research, epidemiology, and outcomes studies. Accessible EHR and patient-generated data can mean:

  • Shorter, less expensive clinical trials, making clinical research with FHIR more efficient
  • Improved interactions with clinicians and patients
  • Better risk assessment for new medical products

Physicians

FHIR for physicians combined with FHIR EHR integration allows faster access to patient records and health data. With leveraging AI and machine learning with FHIR, the possibilities expand to:

  • Improved diagnoses and treatment plans
  • Shorter patient visits without losing quality of care
  • Flexibility to change vendors thanks to increased system compatibility

Payers

FHIR for payers helps health insurers adapt to HHS regulations for CMS and ONC FHIR compliance. This allows them to:

  • Easily update providers on health plan protocols
  • Enable freer, secure healthcare data exchange of claims and patient information via third-party apps
  • Automate approval processes, reducing administrative time

We invite you to share this with colleagues and visit our FHIR information hub. If you want to learn more about FHIR adoption benefits for healthcare providers, or need FHIR solutions for health insurance payers that meet FHIR compliance with CMS interoperability rules, contact us at solutions@prolifics.com.

Illustration of CCPA compliance solutions protecting personal data

Is Your Data Ready? CCPA Wants to Know

The state of California is now enforcing the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Starting July 1, businesses face fines of $2,500 per compliance violation, rising to $7,500 if negligence is involved. On top of that, Californians can sue if their personal information is compromised in a data breach—again, if due to company negligence. This makes implementing robust CCPA compliance solutions an urgent priority.

Under California Consumer Privacy Act requirements, Californians have the right to:

  • Know what personal information of theirs is collected, used, shared, or sold
  • Request deletion of their personal information
  • Opt-out of the sale of their personal information

Why CCPA Compliance Solutions Start with Data Knowledge

Achieving CCPA data privacy best practices—much like GDPR compliance before it—begins with understanding your customers’ personally identifiable information (PII). You must be able to answer:

  • What data do you store?
  • Where is the data?
  • Who has access to the data?
  • What is the data being used for?
fines for CCPA

This means data governance for CCPA compliance is inseparable from broader initiatives in data management and data security.

Choosing the Right CCPA Compliance Solutions and Tools

There are countless tools claiming to support California data privacy regulations. When evaluating any CCPA compliance assessment software, make sure to ask:

what happening to your customer data

Are You Scanning All My Data?

Some tools only scan file names, column headers, or samples. You need CCPA data scan tools that can deep scan structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data across servers, email systems, shared drives, cloud, and on-premises. Comprehensive CCPA unstructured data scanning ensures you uncover every hidden pocket of PII.

Can the Solution Learn as It Goes?

Look for solutions that use AI for CCPA compliance. Artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) detect hidden data relationships and create rules that enhance CCPAdata classification and inventory accuracy over time. The benefits of AI/ML in CCPA data privacy solutions include continuous learning and improved data quality insights.

CCPA compliance preperations

What Will the Data Scan Deliver?

Expect a full inventory of data assets with reports on locations, quality, classifications, and sensitivities. This forms the basis for CCPA personal information protection decisions. A quality-first approach eliminates long debates over definitions by letting the system set rules up front.

How Long Will the Scan Take?

High-quality solutions can complete deep scans in days rather than weeks. Speed matters when aiming to prepare for CCPA compliance efficiently.

Will the Solution Continue to Work for Me?

Compliance isn’t “one and done.” New data constantly flows into your organization. The best tools offer ongoing CCPA compliance monitoring tools to ensure you remain compliant long-term.

How Prolifics Can Help

If you’re wondering how to prepare for CCPA compliance, our experts can help assess your readiness. We offer a CCPA compliance health check services package—an inventory and risk assessment that gives you a clear understanding of your exposure.

We also provide deep data scanning for CCPA compliance through our Data Hawk accelerator, a key technology in any data privacy project. Data Hawk delivers unmatched scanning and interrogation capabilities for both structured and unstructured data.

Whether you need to know questions to ask CCPA data scanning vendors or want to learn what is a CCPA compliance health check, our team has the answers. We ensure our recommendations align with California Consumer Privacy Act requirements and best practices for CCPA personal information protection.

The Business Case for Compliance

Failing to meet CCPA data privacy best practices is costly—not only in fines but also in reputational damage. Investing in CCPA compliance solutions that integrate with your broader data governance for CCPA compliance strategy reduces legal risks and strengthens customer trust.

By embedding AI for CCPA compliance and scalable CCPA data scan tools into your infrastructure, you’ll be better positioned to adapt to evolving California data privacy regulations and other emerging laws.

Ready to protect your data and your reputation? Visit our expert hub for resources on how to protect personal information under the California Consumer Privacy Act or email us at solutions@prolifics.com to get started.

Doctor talking with a patient and typing with his laptop

CMS and ONC Issue Final Rules On Patient Health Data- Now What?

Two agencies have issued their final rules on sharing patient health data, and although we expected them, the rules leave most healthcare payers and providers wondering what to do.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) outlines a series of policies on health information sharing and access in its Interoperability and Patient Access final rule (CMS-9115-F). Some of the policies become applicable as early as fall of this year, with one major policy – “Patient Access API” – coming into force January 1, 2021.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) issued its final rule under the 21st Century Cures Act. ONC also promotes patient access, with a goal of “… an ‘app economy’ that provides innovation and choice to patients, physicians, hospitals, payers, and employers.”

Both the CMS and ONC rules adopt HL7/FHIR® standards. HL7s Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR for short) is simply a data API standards framework that lets us share data using simple web standards and build solutions that interoperate. FHIR lets us easily aggregate data from disparate systems to gain new insights using machine learning.

“The CMS rule stresses patient access to their own electronic health data from payers,” said Tim Henrion, Prolifics’ Quick FHIR Solution Director. “ONC is mostly concerned with interoperability and preventing ‘information blocking’ – real or perceived practices that an organization might use to keep information from patients. The goal of both CMS and ONC is to give patients the information they need to make decisions and shop in the healthcare marketplace – and ultimately drive down costs.”

Join Tim Henrion and other members of the Prolifics team for an educational presentation about CMS and participate in an open dialogue with others in your industry. The virtual event is happening at 4:30 p.m. ET, on Tuesday, April 22. Be a part of the conversation and stay informed.

Event: FHIR® side Virtual Happy Hour
Pointing at data

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