FHIR

Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR, pronounced "Fire") is an MnM project, initiated in September 2011. Prior to it becoming a HL7 project this work was known as Resources for Health (RFH), a "fresh look" proposal by Grahame Grieve, which he made made on August 18th, 2011.

FHIR defines a set of "Resources" that represent granular clinical concepts. The resources can be managed in isolation, or aggregated into complex documents. This flexibility offers coherent solutions for a range of interoperability problems.

The simple direct definitions of the resources are based on thorough requirements gathering, formal analysis and extensive cross-mapping to other relevant standards. A workflow management layer provides support for designing, procuring, and integrating solutions.

Technically, FHIR is designed for the web; the resources are based on simple XML, with an http-based RESTful protocol where each resource has predictable URL. Where possible, open internet standards are used for data representation.

The initial definition can be found here.