A systematic review of the use of FHIR to support clinical research, public health and medical education

Purpose

This systematic review aimed to identify and categorize applications using Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) to support activities outside of direct healthcare provision.

Design/methodology/approach

A systematic electronic search was performed, and 53 studies were included after the selection process.

Findings

The results show that FHIR is being used to support (1) clinical research (i.e. clinical research based on interventional trials, data interoperability to support clinical research and advanced communication services to support clinical research), (2) public health and (3) medical education. Despite the FHIR potential to support activities outside of direct healthcare provision, some barriers were identified, namely difficulties translating the proposed applications to clinical environments or FHIR technical issues that require further developments.

Originality/value

This study provided a broad review of how FHIR is being applied in clinical activities outside of direct clinical care and identified three major domains, that is, clinical research, public health and medical education, being the first and most representative in terms of number of publications.