Jembi recently kicked off a series of FHIR® training sessions for key stakeholders in Uganda working to advance national health information exchange.
FHIR® (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) is an interoperability standard that allows health systems to exchange electronic patient data in a standardized way. Adopting FHIR is essential for achieving interoperability among diverse health information systems at a national scale.
Over the next few weeks, Jembi trainers will provide foundational knowledge on FHIR to equip Uganda’s Ministry of Health and IT implementers to apply the standard. The initial session introduced core FHIR concepts like resources, datatypes, identifiers and cardinality.
The key learning outcomes were
Understanding why FHIR® is used to make different healthcare systems work together.
Learn about key FHIR® components to help you organize healthcare data.
Know how to navigate through a FHIR® resource
Understand how to use identifiers, IDs, code systems, and extensions
Grasp the basics of how FHIR® helps in organizing minimum required data.
Attendees shared valuable insights on current interoperability challenges we aim to address through the training, including lack of standardized lab codes and difficulties mapping local data to FHIR resource data elements. We’ll incorporate their feedback into future trainings.
By engaging implementers early and collaborating on FHIR adoption, we hope to prevent interoperability pitfalls and save valuable time and resources compared to retrofitting systems later. Attendees expressed enthusiasm for the interactive sessions.
We’re privileged to support Uganda’s interoperability journey by facilitating implementation of international standards like FHIR. With ongoing collaboration, we’re confident Uganda can leverage health data exchange standards to enhance public health outcomes and progress towards UHC.
