Background: Malaysia's Drive for Standardized Healthcare Data Exchange
Health Information Exchange (HIE) in Malaysia is a national initiative driven by the Ministry of Health (MOH) to establish a secure platform for electronic exchange of health-related data among medical facilities, providers, and patients.This initiative aims to focus on:
Enabling Continuity of care for healthcare professionals nationwide to access and share critical medical information (Lifetime Health Record - LHR) digitally.
Streamlining Care Coordination to reduce the burden of integrating disparate systems, allowing for smoother workflows and information exchange between healthcare providers. This fosters a more coordinated care environment for patients, ensuring continuity across different providers.
Empowering Person Engagement by promoting secure access to their medical records empowers patients to actively participate in their healthcare decisions.
HL7 FHIR: The Foundation for Interoperability
The global standard for digital healthcare data exchange, HL7 FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources), has been chosen as the integration exchange standard. This selection ensures seamless communication between disparate healthcare IT systems. The specific implementation will utilize Smile CDR FHIR engine, an enterprise solution built on the advanced HL7 FHIR Release 4 standard and powered by HAPI, a widely adopted FHIR server framework.
Scope: Establishing a National Standard with Flexibility
This project focuses on introducing the HL7 FHIR standard for standardized healthcare information exchange across Malaysia's health system. A key deliverable is the creation of the Malaysia Core (MY Core) Profile, which will serve as the national baseline for data exchange specification.
Future implementation guide and specification in Malaysia can be further derived from MY Core to further address specific profile constraint beyond the national specification. These derived profiles must conform to the specifications defined in MY Core Profile to ensure national interoperability adhereance.
Following the 80/20 rule, the [base HL7 FHIR]((https://hl7.org/fhir/R4/resourcelist.html) specifications focuses on the 20% of requirements that satisfy 80% of the interoperability needs. MY Core will attempt to fill in the local context gap not addressed by the base HL7 FHIR specification.
Objective: A Clear Roadmap for Malaysia HL7 FHIR Implementation
This implementation guide has two primary objectives:
- Offer a comprehensive Implementation Guide for the Malaysia FHIR standard known as the Malaysia Core (MY Core) to equip developers & implementor with the necessary knowledge and tools to seamlessly integrate the standard into their healthcare software solutions.
- Provide the profile development process for the Malaysia FHIR standard to ensures a well-defined and nationally recognized approach to data exchange.
Author & Contributors
| Role | Name | Organization | Contact |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primary Author | Dr. Saifuldaulah Bin Mohd Hafiz Ngoo | Malaysia Healthcare Nexus (MHN) | saifuldaulah@mhnexus.com |
| Supporting Author | Nur Iman Raihana Binti Zamani | Malaysia Healthcare Nexus (MHN) | imanraihana@mhnexus.com |
| Supporting Author | Ahmad Aiman Haziq bin Ahmad Tarmidzi | Malaysia Healthcare Nexus (MHN) | haziq@mhnexus.com |
| Contributor | Dr. Muhamad Azrin Bin Zubir | Malaysia Healthcare Nexus (MHN) | azrinmd@mhnexus.com |
| Contributor | Soo Kong Mooi (Billy) | Malaysia Healthcare Nexus (MHN) | billykmsoo@mhnexus.com |
For list of Subject Matter Expert involved in the project refer SME involved.