The FHIR community has made rapid progress in developing a clean, open, specification for granular data access, along with a consistent means to provide for document retrieval. FHIR provides a compelling scope of data models out-of-the-box, along with a principled framework for resource extension and resource constraints (“profiling”). Together, these characteristics provide a forward-thinking standard whose benefits should facilitate effective—and cost-effective—implementation. As conceived, the FHIR standard could provide a powerful way forward for remediating a long list of informational bottlenecks in HIT. |