FHIR Reference Information
FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperable Resources) is the next generation healthcare standards framework from the HL7 (Health Level Seven International) organization. It's used by healthcare organizations to facilitate the exchange and integration of electronic health information (e.g., clinical, financial, diagnostics, etc.).
The FHIR framework includes functionality that enables interoperability. FHIR achieves interoperability by utilizing HTTP-based RESTful APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) and well-defined messaging semantics. Moreover, FHIR resources can be represented in human-readable XML or JSON messages. Because FHIR leverages RESTful APIs, XML and JSON, a healthcare organization can easily add a FHIR interface to their applications. They can also build tools that retrieve information from another healthcare organization.