Infor shines in hackathon showcasing interoperability

As the NHS is working towards adopting an integrated care model, clinical interoperability has become a key priority once again to ensure that the various stakeholders across the care continuum have access to the right information at the right time. The Infor Cloverleaf team has been engaged in the efforts to promote interoperability and participated in a two-day hackathon in October, organized and hosted by INTEROPen, a UK-based action group whose mission is to accelerate the development and adoption of open interoperability standards for the health and social care sector.

The event focused on the exchange of medications information to improve patient safety and it was supported by NHSX and NHS Digital. One of the main questions around medications is how the Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) could be implemented in the secondary care sector. It’s an important subject as the EPS has delivered a lot of value by providing a more efficient and convenient prescribing and dispensing process for patients and staff in the primary care sector where it has already been successfully adopted.

A more diverse IT system landscape in the secondary care space however poses a more complex interoperability challenge to implement EPS. Teams participating in the hackathon were asked to come up with relevant solutions using the HL7 FHIR standard to interact with the EPS platform. The Infor team took on the challenge and utilized our innovative FHIR solutions to hack an HL7v2 to FHIR translation service using the latest UK Core FHIR R4 profiles as well as a translation service between Care Connect (STU3) and UK Core (R4) profiles.

For Trusts and other providers, the implications are significant: regardless of what clinical systems they use, there is an easy way to connect them to the EPS without having to make a costly investment to either replace or upgrade their clinical applications.

Karim Boureche, who represented Infor at the event, said, “For clinical system vendors who currently lack FHIR connectivity, but need to FHIR-enable their applications, Infor provides attractive product solutions. Infor FHIR Bridge can be utilized, the same way as I did in the event, to immediately FHIR-enable an application to meet regulatory requirements.”

Overall, the hackathon generated a lot of new ideas and collaboration between likeminded individuals and organizations all working towards the same goal: improving interoperability in the NHS to provide better care for patients. For the Infor team, it provided a great opportunity to learn how FHIR APIs can be leveraged to interact with EPS and to demonstrate how our solutions can deliver value for different stakeholders.

Written by:

Dimitrios Kakoulis, Sr. Digital Strategist