为什么选择 Azure FHIR 服务器？ 是否存在“技术”差异？

Question

I have a general question related to the Azure FHIR server. Specifically, are there "technical" reasons to use it to store electronic health records (EHR)?

People told me major healthcare providers are using FHIR server to store EHR. I understand the business reason. But, technically, Azure cloud is HIPAA compliant. Anything stored and run in Azure is HIPAA compliant. So, if there are other ways such as SQL Server and Data Lake to store EHR, why do we have to store them in FHIR server?

Another reason I ask this question is that my team feels it is not efficient to store EHR via API calls, and it is difficult to query data in JSON format for reporting. So, they feel if Azure is HIPAA compliant they would prefer to store EHR in SQL Server or Data Lake for ease of data management. Both also provide role based security to limit unauthorized access with encryption.

No sure if I miss anything. Can anyone tell me the "technical" differences / advantages of storing EHR in FHIR server? Thanks in advance for your replies.

Answer 1

FHIR is primarily for health data interchange using more modern formats such as JSON, so you don't necessarily have to store the EHR data in FHIR format; you can instead have a layer that transforms your EHR data (in SQL or any other format you prefer) to FHIR format (JSON/XML/RDF) as and when needed.

Without a modern standard like FHIR, for the most part, it is very costly and time consuming to design and develop "interfaces" for healthcare data interchange;

Does that help clarify the "technical" need for FHIR?