HL7 Launches ONC FAST Accelerator to Boost FHIR Scalability  

Health Level Seven International (HL7) announced that ONC's FHIR at Scale Taskforce (FAST) will transition into an HL7 FHIR Accelerator.

ONC originally founded the FAST project to define a common set of infrastructure standards for scalable Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) solutions. As an Accelerator, FAST will continue its interoperability work with participation from various stakeholders.

"As a widely adopted standard supported by many of the most notable stakeholders in the health IT community, FHIR is making rapid, real-world progress toward addressing the biggest challenges of health data interoperability," Charles Jaffe, MD, PhD, HL7 International CEO, noted in a public statement.

"The FAST Accelerator will bring us closer to defining a consistent and scalable approach to deploying FHIR across high-value use cases and disseminating these best practices to the industry," Jaffe added.

FAST will complement and support HL7's other accelerators, officials said.  

While groups such as the Da Vinci Project and CodeX develop health IT data standards to support specific use cases, FAST focuses on scalability approaches that healthcare organizations can leverage across use cases to simplify the deployment of FHIR in disparate environments.

Earlier this year, FAST formed a cross-stakeholder team to begin the transition to an HL7 FHIR Accelerator. The team has been developing a framework for the accelerator's scope of work, governance principles, and operating and funding models.

"HL7 International has been an exceptional partner and its standards are a key part of what drives interoperability in the US healthcare system," said Micky Tripathi, PhD, national coordinator for health IT. "HL7's FHIR standard is stimulating innovation and quickly transforming how data is exchanged between providers, payers, and patients."

"Along with the Sequoia Project, we recently published a FHIR Roadmap as part of the implementation of the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA)," Tripathi continued. "FHIR Accelerators like FAST are poised to play a key role in advancing technical specifications that can be implemented at scale within TEFCA and we look forward to what's to come."

HL7 is seeking organizations interested in becoming members of the FAST Accelerator. Members will help prioritize use cases and drive standard development and implementation.