Connecting Electronic Medical Records with External Apps

Connecting Electronic Medical Records with External Apps
Information Technology Architecture and High-Level Design for Health Information Challenge
Connecting Electronic Medical Records with External Apps
Introduction 
The management of health information has necessitated integrating IT solutions to address the problems of information availability and accessibility. There ought to be the integration of different levels of care while also addressing the fragmentation and duplication of information while also maintaining confidentiality (Saweros & Song, 2019). The information technology architecture will ensure structured and completed integration of the Electronic Medical Records with external apps and uniformity. Researchers have used different standards of the architecture of the EMR. Still, regardless of the standards and EMR system implemented, the EMR components are integrated to ensure the seamless flow of information. There is a focus on the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) tool to facilitate the exchange of information between healthcare providers, patients, payers, caregivers, researchers, and other users. 
Systems architecture 
The collection, storage, and processing of patient information are crucial to an efficient EMR system, and users need to access accurate information in a timely manner. Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) is the latest standard implemented by the Health Level Seven (HL7) international organization. The FHIR is made up of three main parts: general documentation, implementation, and resource list. General documentation describes how resources are defined and provides reference material. Implementation describes how to use resource messaging, clinical documents, REST, or through a service-based architecture. The resource list contains all the resources defined by FHIR, and there are different resources pertaining to clinicians, administration, and infrastructure.
Exchange data national wide
HL7 standards and the FHIR specifications facilitate and define the exchange of health-related data and information. The standards inform and facilitate the data exchange among the providers, promoting continuity of care as interactions occur. Besides the standards, the eHealth Exchange is a health information exchange network with policies and standards allowing the secure exchange of healthcare information sharing. Facilitating the nationwide exchange of health data and information, the participants share information through the health information exchanges (HIE). Health information is shared electronically, and HIE has secure electronic information,
 Storing data
 There is the use of an EHR/ EMR System with patient’s health details and share the health information through health providers or health plans. Physical copies of personal health information are kept in safe places with limited access. There is a backup of the health information to facilitate recovery in case of data loss. Record-level encryption of the patients’ medical information secures the data.
 VPN
 A VPN is allowed, mainly when users, especially health workers, access data remotely. It is HIPAA compliant and meets the encryption requirements. However, when accessing patient health information and data remotely, it is advisable to avoid portable storage devices such as USB flash drives. The VPN helps protect the network security, and a focus on HIPAA compliance ensures that patient health information is secure.
 Alternative commercial healthcare technology system 
The Substitutable Medical Apps Reusable Technologies (SMART) platform develops interchangeable healthcare applications compatible with various health organizations and health systems (Mandl et al., 2012). The SMART platform supports open-source tools, and multiple applications are now available using the platform. In addition, there are more connections to different health data systems, including the EMRs integrated via the SMART standards.
Collecting data
EHR and EMR systems are helpful to collect and store patients’ health information, and in the case of population data, there should not be personally identifiable information. When obtaining patient data and medical information, there are adherence standards and maintaining privacy. Access to accurate data is essential in healthcare and supports medical decision-making to improve health outcomes. 
FHIR and HL7
One of the advantages of FHIR is that it supports REST protocol and architectural style, which supports scalability. Furthermore, it is easily integrated into modern web-based communication technologies such as JSON, HTTP, and XML (Benson & Grieve, 2016). Thus, the FHIR improves patient clinical application facilitates access to patient information, which improves experiences. FHIR is now integrated with XDS by IHE, where there are Mobile Health Documents (MHD) profiles and different resource-constrained systems. The FHIR can be used with or without the XDS/MHD and allows users to create access, reference, and share documents, including PDFs.
HL7 has developed widely used standards and protocols for communication and sharing data among medical providers. The healthcare industry has adopted the FHIR framework to share information electronically and advances interoperability. Furthermore, the HL7 standards have created a standardized application programming interface (API) to enable the exchange of data, information, and medical records and data processing. Thus, the HL7 standards have provided a framework to facilitate the exchange, integration, sharing, and retrieval of electronic health information among healthcare providers.
The FHIR supports clinical decision-making and clinical quality...