Interoperability Land™ is a synthetic FHIR data ecosystem platform for app design and testing. It can be accessed at interopland.com.
This curriculum was created in partnership with Michigan HIMSS chapter, Interoperability Institute, and the University of Michigan.
Introduction: Interoperability has become critical as the need to share data throughout healthcare has grown. Interoperability is important in healthcare because it allows for continuity of care across interdisciplinary teams and their health institutions. In addition, interoperability can reduce the cost of care, improve care quality, and increase patient safety.
Overall Learning Objective: By going through this curriculum, the overall objective is for students to learn about how interoperability can be increased using standards and available technologies. This curriculum covers how to query HL7 Fast Health Interoperability Resources (FHIR), how to use FHIR servers, how to access FHIR data through APIs, and how to create and connect applications to FHIR servers.
Platform: The curriculum relies on the Interoperability Land™ platform to help students learn. Interoperability Land™ is a synthetic FHIR data ecosystem and application testing sandbox. It allows students to access and work with 14 different FHIR servers. The data in these 14 FHIR servers approximate the health data that would be found in a real-world health system.
Target Audience: Students taking introductory courses in health informatics and healthcare information technology.
Curriculum Details: This curriculum includes 5 learning sessions, each with questions to test participants knowledge. The curriculum is made available through a GitHub repository containing all instructional materials, code, and API requests needed to complete the 5 sessions. In addition, a student survey is included as well. The five sessions are:
Session 1- Introduction to Interoperability and FHIR Resources
Session 2- Querying FHIR Resources from HAPI FHIR servers
Session 3- Using FHIR APIs
Session4- Using FHIR APIs in Low Code Environment (Bubble.io)
Session 5- Using FHIR APIs in a simple JavaScript web app
Licenses and Sharing: The GitHub repository is open to the public. However, to use the curriculum, instructors will need to acquire an Interoperability Land™ instance and add accounts for their students in the Interoperability Land™ platform.
Early Impact: The curriculum was used in the Fall of 2020 and will be used in the Fall of 2021 by health informatics and health IT students at the University of Michigan. The Fall 2021 version is an update from Fall 2020 to add Session 5 and changes to Session 4. The students that used the curriculum in 2020 were given an opportunity to give feedback on the learning material, they testified to the usefulness of securely sharing FHIR data and that they learned a significant amount from the lessons. The creation of this curriculum allowed us to be able to share our knowledge on interoperability and multi-target FHIR queries at the HIMSS21 conference.