With a heightened give attention to well being fairness all through our work, ONC has adopted the idea of “health equity by design.” Alongside these traces, well being IT can, and may, be used to higher establish and mitigate disparities whereas enhancing alternatives for underrepresented populations. In 2019, underneath the Leading Edge Acceleration Projects (LEAP) for Well being IT program, ONC funded the College of Texas at Austin’s Dell Medical College (Dell Med) to design, develop, and reveal enhanced affected person engagement applied sciences for care and analysis, with a give attention to well being fairness.
The Dell Med group proposed creating a affected person engagement know-how platform utilizing utility programming interfaces (APIs) and the identical nationwide requirements for interoperability, safety, and authorization being utilized by digital well being data, particularly FHIR® and SMART on FHIR.
Designing the FHIRedApp Platform
The FHIRedApp platform was designed utilizing human-centered design methodology to establish the wants and preferences of a various group of Latino, African-American, and Asian-American sufferers. To design an easy-to-use platform, the group held 20 Group Engagement Studio (CES) classes with ethnically and racially various sufferers from Central Texas. The method concerned beta testing, semi-structured interviews, and pilot testing with individuals to make sure the app’s excessive usability.
A group navigator led every CES session, and the dialogue subjects included group well being experiences, group readiness, design preferences, adoption, and sustainability. The method for designing the app additionally included human-centered design methodologies and insights gathered from the CES classes helped recognized options and capabilities that ethnically and racially various sufferers desired from a well being app platform. A high-fidelity prototype of the app (Determine 1) was then developed, beta examined by various sufferers, and utilized by the event group to code for the ultimate app.
Determine 1: FHIRedApp high-fidelity prototype
Whereas the FHIRedApp will be capable to hook up with FHIR API endpoints supplied by licensed EHR applied sciences required by the ONC Cures Act Final Rule, the platform has additionally been designed to leverage well being data exchanges (HIEs) and analysis networks, which act as information aggregators from a number of EHRs. The FHIRedApp can also be an app platform that permits sufferers to achieve entry to their information, grant entry to all or a part of their information, and make it out there to third-party app builders by way of FHIR APIs. The Dell Med group is presently creating a pilot app to assist with recruitment for analysis research and integration with social companies referral networks.
The event of FHIRedApp has proven how know-how improvements utilizing FHIR APIs for exchanging information could be knowledgeable by way of a strategy of group engagement and human-centered design. Wanting ahead, the group and group members hope to repeatedly provide further options and enhancements on the platform and take a look at scalability utilizing different HIEs and information sources sooner or later. To be taught extra about this undertaking, read the Dell Med team’s findings.
