From HITECH to SMART-on-FHIR: Where Does the Healthcare App Ecosystem Stand?

SMART-on-FHIR is the inflection point for driving the shift to value-based care. The reason: It offers another pathway to integration in which user experiences, not just discrete data, are shared across systems, enabling lightning quick implementation. A little over a decade ago, fewer than 10% of hospitals were using electronic health records (EHRs). But then healthcare officially moved into the digital age when the 2009 Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act was signed into law, ushering in widespread and rapid adoption of EHRs in hospitals across the country.

While EHRs today are ubiquitous and contain more patient data than ever before, these systems can often create information silos. Such technological barriers can make it difficult to share data with stakeholders, from patients and providers to payers and the research community.