Over the last several years, healthcare providers, payers, health IT developers, regulators, and other important stakeholders have pledged their commitment to adopting the HL7® Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resource (FHIR®) standard for the future of health IT interoperability. These critical parties have rallied behind the FHIR standard because of its multi-purpose data exchange functionality, which can significantly improve the healthcare sector’s patient care workflow.
However, healthcare organizations must adopt the evaluation practices needed to properly test their systems so they can confirm their ability to support the complex multi-party use cases that come with utilizing the FHIR standard in production at scale. In response, Drummond has developed FHIRplace, an automated, remote, and full-matrix FHIR interoperability testing platform. Initially used for supply chain and retail vendors, FHIRplace connects pre-production systems to confirm the interoperability efficacy of their connected production-ready software environments.
Let’s explore Drummond’s history with full-matrix testing to highlight how its proven and tested track record over the last two decades acts as a key indicator of its applicable success within the world of FHIR based interoperability testing.
An Introduction to Full-Matrix Testing
Over the past two decades, Drummond’s has used full matrix testing to help retail and manufacturing supply chain sectors demonstrate their system’s ability to interoperate with connecting production environments. This has made it possible to support the reliable exchange of electronic documents, purchase orders, invoices, and advanced shipping notices.
To date, Drummond has managed over 40 interoperability group test events. These typically include 15-20 software developer participants per testing event, with some events reaching 30 participants. Testing occurs twice annually with the timing of the events aligning with common product release cycles of the participants; many of which have been in production for over 20 years.
Supply and Retail’s Reception to Full Matrix Testing
The greatest indicator of full matrix testing efficacy in supply chain and retail manufacturing can be found in the number of vendors who have repeatedly used the platform to test their systems. Since standards specifications have evolved to handle more processing options, greater scale, and advances in security and encryption standards, full-matrix users have consistently sought retesting to provide their stakeholders peace of mind by confirming their system’s ongoing interoperability.
Drummond takes pride in the fact that throughout full-matrix testing history, over 23 tests have been conducted for repeated full-matrix users to confirm the interoperable efficacy of their data exchange systems. This number points to the platform’s effectiveness as it demonstrates users recognize the value of full-matrix testing’s initial and repeated interoperability assessments for their pre-production environments. Testing events have proven to identify issues not found in the initial evaluation, encouraging testers to re-utilize the full-matrix testing process to confirm their system’s ongoing interoperability preparedness.
For those interested in utilizing FHIRplace, it’s important to note that these supply chain and retail manufacturing tests have been conducted on systems that are already confirmed as conformant to a standard before full-matrix testing, showcasing how the collaborative and exhaustive process of full-matrix testing goes above and beyond traditional assessment practices. This is why Drummond has chosen the full-matrix testing mechanics to act as the foundation of the FHIRplace solution, as it presents the perfect platform to facilitate the complex testing needed to root out FHIR-based interoperability issues on a multi-party level.
Conclusion
The widescale adoption of full-matrix interoperability testing presents the health IT industry with opportunities to facilitate the seamless adoption of the FHIR standard within its most critical patient workflows. By adopting FHIRplace, healthcare industry stakeholders will be able to easily navigate and solve healthcare’s most complex health data exchange and interoperability issues that alternative FHIR based interoperability testing methods struggle to properly manage. For this reason, FHIRplace is the most proactive step for attaining FHIR compliance and fostering a reliable FHIR-based data exchange system within an organization’s network. IT