In November 2017 the Centricity
Practice Solution 12.3 and Centricity EMR 9.12 products were certified to the ONC 2015 Edition certification criteria. The products were released into general availability for GE Healthcare customers just in time for Christmas. Included in these releases was an API Server component which supports both the HL7® FHIR® and CDA® standards including the HL7 Consolidated CDA 2.1 implementation guide required for ONC 2015 Certification of EHR Technology (CEHRT). We have now deployed the second edition of our Healthcare API Developer Portal, describing the terms and conditions for use of the newly released APIs available in those products as well as the documentation. There should be no doubt in your minds that GE Healthcare is fully behind the HL7 FHIR standard for APIs. The API Server supports more than 35 FHIR Resources, including those necessary to capture information to communicate the Common Clinical Data Set described in the ONC 2015 CEHRT requirements, as well as the HL7® Consolidated CDA® (CCDA) 2.1 specifications, and additional APIs to support practice management. The capabilities GE Healthcare delivered in the API server go beyond the basic requirements for ONC certification and meet the needs for providers attesting to meaningful use.
GE Healthcare demonstrated an application using these APIs at the HL7 FHIR Round Table in the first week of December in New Orleans.
This is a monumental step forward for GE Healthcare, our customers and for interoperability in general, and one we’ve been working towards for the last two years. However, it doesn’t end here. We’ve already been planning what is next for our product APIs using the HL7® FHIR® standard, and you can be certain more is coming. But don’t wait: check out our developer portal, look at our APIs, and think about how they can advance your organization into greater interoperability. Please also share with us what else we can do to help you achieve your interoperability goals.
As with any monumental accomplishment, there are plenty of people to thank. These are the GE Healthcare developers who made the API Server happen:
Team FIRE includes: Henry Hu, Pawan Lakshinaranagarianandbabu, Sergey Lazutin, Alan Libby, Praneet Lokesh, Sandeep Solanki, and Guixuan Su
Team Vulcan includes: PJ Krishnamurthy, Dileep Ravindranath, Venkat Reddy, and Kumar Satyam
In addition, Lisa Sawyer and Whitney Tarkington worked on the documentation, and Meagan Pearson on the user experience.
We also had help from several other GE teams. The Matrix team set up the build environment. The Need4Speed team did the performance testing, the Leo team helped with client code for patient access, and the Elixir team assisted with all things database related. We also called in Ruth Berge for CDA Style Sheet assistance.
Ajay Jha and Jayanth Lakavali managed the API Server development teams in US and India. Lori Kilmer managed the API Server program across both continents as well as serving as scrum team lead in Seattle. Torin Shepherd assisted me with overall architecture for the API Server and integration with our existing service layer.
The people that we would like to thank most of all though, are those customers and partners who worked beside us over the last 18 months to make this release a reality. Some of the features in this release would not exist today if it had not been for your input and working with us through requirements gathering, testing, pilots, and HL7 and IHE Connectathons to make this a successful release.
Thank you all for joining me on this ride!
