FHIR Business Case Issue Page

Pointed someone whose opinion I respect who's fairly heavily involved in healthcare and IHE, but not so much with HL7 at FHIR to get a first opinion. Initial reaction was:

• Seems somewhat of a Rolls Royce solution - trying to support every possible option
• Radical paradigm shift that doesn't seem appropriate for short term implementation problems
• No clear value proposition/problem space declaration

Most of the "initial reaction" we've had so far has been from technical folks, not business folks (or "business-minded" folks). We need to appeal to the latter too. V3 people are rabid for FHIR because they're so frustrated with what they have. But we need to make a clearer case that can appeal to those in the v2/CDA/other legacy camps.

We need to do a better job of setting context, including:

• What is the problem space FHIR is targeting?
• Where does FHIR fit into the overall solution space (i.e. what work has to happen on top of FHIR, and in what situtaions? - e.g. FHIR doesn't fix the need to standardize - and understand - business processes)
• What is the transition strategy? (initial focus on mobile & other greenspace, then how v2 and/or v3 could migrate, cross-standard interoperability approaches, incremental transition)
• What's the business case for FHIR? I.e. What's the ROI? What's the justification for change/adoption?

The setting of this business context needs to be either on, or accessed (by an obvious link) from the intro page.

We may not have clear/supportable answers to all of these questions yet, but in that case, we should be up front about it. Recognizing that the questions are important and need answering and identifying what our plan is to come up with solid answers will build us a lot more credibility than ignoring or not even thinking about the questions.