July 3, 2020 was a significant milestone in the journey of HL7 India and for the health IT community in India. Over the past several months, we have been actively involving & educating the community through open houses, meetups, webinars and training on HL7 FHIR & APIs for healthcare. There has been spurt in awareness about interoperability and need for standard based data exchange. We at HL7 India have been striving to equip the implementers & decision makers with the right set of tools to enable them to build a digital future for healthcare in India. The first Virtual FHIR Connectathon is one more step in that direction.
The Virtual FHIR connectathon is a first in the country of its kind. Not only is the event being held for the first time ever, but also the overwhelming response that the event received from everyone has been talk of the town. The efforts of the track leads & organizers has been world class.
3 months or so ago when we conceived the idea of this connectathon , our intent was to provide an environment to healthcare IT practitioners where they can connect with their peers from the industry, learn by contributing the FHIR standards development for the country and build a community of folks trying to make healthcare better through use of technology & standards. The five tracks in the connectathon were put in after a lot of thoughts and deliberations. Each track has a specific purpose and objective and if one puts all tracks together side by side and looks, the picture becomes clear Right from learning the concepts to building the FHIR platform. Further, whatever is your experience & vocation, there is a track for you.
We announced the Launch of the Connectathon
And since that post, let me take you through some numbers to put things in perspective of what has been possible because of the community and collaboration
- 83+ Companies represented
- ~225 participants
- 5 tracks
- 10+ expert sessions during pre-connectathon worth 1000s of dollars
- 1000+ hours put across by all track leads and committee members.
- 17 hours of event
In order to achieve the goal we designed the connectathon to have three phases.
- Pre-Connectathon
- Connectathon
- Post Connectathon
Pre-Connectathon:
This phase was designed with following purpose
- Track leads to prepare the track
- Help participants prepare to be more effective and engaging during the connectathon
Some of the highlights of this phase are below
- As part of our effort in bringing the best understanding to all our participants, we brought in industry leaders and domain experts like
- John Moehrke for insights into IHE and HL7 work on FHIR (1.5 hours)
- Nagesh Bhashyam on FHIR Profiles and how profiling works world over (2 hours)
- Buitendijk Hans session on V2-FHIR project at hl7 international ( 1.5 hours)
- Experts from CareCom for Terminology Services (1.5 hours)
- Experts from Firely who shared with the participants the tool sets (1.5 hours)
- Experts from Philips on Interoperability global challenges & opportunities ( 1 hour)
- Daily standups for each track
- Participants training & orientation by track leads
- FHIR India Profiling Track developed & released for community review first version of FHIR India profiles. Close to 30 FHIR profiles created during this period.
Close to around 10 hours of sessions from experts easily makes up 2 days’ worth of learnings in any HL7 international conference costing 1000s of dollars.
Wait, we are not done as yet !!This was just during pre-connectathon.
Connectathon:
It’s important to bring all these activities together for an India Context and to kick-start our Connectathon we have some great sessions planned on the 3 connectathon days
Day 1, 03 July, 2020 (4 hours):
We have Keynote sessions from Industry Experts who will share the need for a connectathon of this nature in India. With the government fast tracking the adoption of Digital Health Records, our connectathon is being seen with even greater interest to the learning we are able to provide our participants. The sessions on Day 1, will help you all understand that context.
Keynote Speakers:
- Prof. Rajendra Pratap Gupta
- Manick Rajendran
- Grahame Grieve
- Madhusudhan Karupakula
- Dr. Chandil Kumar, Chairman at HL7 India
We also have one expert session on Day 1 by firely, do look out for that as well.
Day 2, 04 July, 2020 (10 hours):
We go back to the core focus of our connectathon, “Learning By Doing”.
We start with a Bang with a Keynote by Grahame Grieve who is popularly regarded world over as the “Father of FHIR” and he will share his insights with us from across the world and provide his key insights on how we can adopt the standard for INDIA.
After his talk, the day is full with 8+ hours of activities packed with learning sessions that will allow you to collaborate with your peers in solving the INDIA SPECIFIC SCENARIOS. You also get some laughter yoga lessons.
Day 3, 05 July, 2020 (3 hours):
On Sunday, the third day, each of the track leads will work to close their respective outstanding activities & we all will be joining the Grand Closing ceremony, which will consist of a report out by our Amazing Track Leads and a talk from Grahame Grieve.
Post Connectathon
The work done during the connectathon is just the beginning. The community now will need to build on the work done. We will work to enable the regular interactions with this amazing community and collaborative initiatives for India
Some of our thoughts on steps ahead:
- We have now published the HL7 India Profiles for a public comment. We will be pushing forward to taking these Profiles to a Release 1 stage using our FHIR Maturity Model, which we will share during our subsequent interactions. We welcome you to reach out to us to be part of this work. Profiles are published at following locations for easy reference.
- https://simplifier.net/FHIRIndiaConnectathon
- https://github.com/HL7India/Connectathon/tree/master/Fhir_India_Profiles
- Comments and suggested updates should be entered in the google spreadsheet here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19sFQT1x5M8ir837OREdPhDVfiVp5LE8zlJeSZmYF1x4/edit#gid=0
- The Terminology Track has gained a lot of traction and we are keen on taking this work forward and continue to engage with experts in these activities.
- Whenever you want to learn FHIR, reach out to our Learning Academy in HL7 India and our expert trainers will get you up to date and skilled
- We are looking forward to be working with Industry Partners further creating Domain Based Implementation Guides, while one of the first one’s we have is the Teleconsultation domain which has of late seen an exponential growth, we will be working to create volunteer groups for different domains like Claims and Finance, Pharmacy Management, and many more…
- Stay connected with us on our Confluence Page and the Slack Workspace which you all have connected to as part of the Connectathon and you can be rest assured that these conversations are only going to be beneficial for the community we hope to build and the collaborations we hope to enable: https://confluence.hl7.org/display/HIN/HL7+India+Home
- And Finally, now that you have experienced the collaboration at India Level, you are now welcome to join and drive the conversations on Interoperability at chat.fhir.org . Ensure that you adhere to the etiquettes of the collaboration tool and do share your experience and solutions that you have enabled in the India context or for your clients worldwide.
All of these post-connectathon activities need time ,effort and community collaboration. We will keep pushing ahead towards the common vision of an open interoperable healthcare ecosystem for India.
Welcome again and Let’s
Connect Collaborate & Create
