FAST was launched in late 2017 in response to an industry-recognized need to address shared FHIR scalability challenges. Acting as a neutral convener, the ONC facilitated the engagement of a highly representative group of volunteer healthcare industry stakeholders and health information technology experts, who worked together to identify FHIR scalability infrastructural challenges, define core capabilities, and begin development of solutions to effectively address them.

FAST started by establishing a vision of a scalable ecosystem infrastructure and a project charter. In 2018, FAST performed a landscape analysis, exploring various industry functional use cases and defining common technical barriers that may be experienced during implementation. From there, FAST defined, proposed, and matured solutions to address scalability

In order to create comprehensive and successful solutions that meet the needs of all stakeholders, an open and transparent engagement strategy was identified as critical from the start. FAST progress was consistently shared at industry conferences, workgroup meetings, and through yearly reports in an effort to be as transparent as possible and to gain broad industry perspectives and feedback on the solutions being developed. FAST also held smaller meetings with key subject matter experts to more deeply vet and validate solution concepts before these concepts moved into the implementation guide process.

All of this is to say is that prior to FAST becoming an HL7 FHIR Accelerator in 2022, a lot of rich, collaborative and valuable work was done to build a strong foundation for the work yet to come.


Additional Information

ArtifactDescriptionDate
FAST Action Plan

This document speaks to the FAST story - its goals, scope, structure, and process—while also summarizing FAST’s work.  The FAST Action Plan:

  • Summarizes each recommended FAST solution
  • Describes individual solution paths to implementation
  • Communicates how the industry can get involved to help bring these solutions to implementation readiness and industry adoption
September 2021
FAST Subject Matter Expert (SME) Panel Sessions

FAST convened panels of SMEs, in a series of 15 working sessions. SMEs were invited to participate based on their expertise in each area and came from various industry backgrounds, including healthcare, finance, and software development.
Discussions explored how each solution could be implemented most effectively, uncovered any remaining gaps and barriers that
need to be addressed, and gleaned other insights that could strengthen FAST solutions—as well as beginning to explore
potential paths forward.  Feedback collected from the SME Sessions was incorporated into the next versions of solution documentation.

2020 - 2021
2020 ONC FAST Workshop

The FAST community solicited industry feedback on both the architectural considerations and pathways to implementation for each of the proposed solutions.  Feedback collected from the workshop sessions was incorporated into the next versions of solution documentation.

2020
FAST Technical Learning Community (TLC) Webinars

FAST Tiger Teams shared initial drafts of their proposed solutions with the FAST TLC and the HL7 Community.  Feedback collected from those sessions was incorporated into the next versions of solution documentation.

2019
FAST Technical BarriersFAST identified a series of technical barriers that needed to be addressed in order to scale FHIR as a ubiquitous technology that enables wide-scale clinical information exchange between providers, payers, and other stakeholders. 2019
FAST Core Capabilities

The FAST Ecosystem Use Case Tiger Team was tasked to analyze a representative list of functional use cases developed by FHIR Accelerators and other HL7 Work Groups—from the perspective of the ecosystem scalability needs and challenges.  Their analysis resulted in the identification of common ecosystem infrastructure challenges that most implementers might encounter, and the core capabilities required to overcome them.

2019
FAST Ecosystem Use Cases

Use cases for FAST were derived in one of 3 approaches:

  1. Barrier Use Cases: Align use cases directly to an identified barrier such as endpoint discovery, security, and identity.
  2. Healthcare Ecosystem Use Cases: Instead of aligning directly to a barrier, utilize industry ecosystem use cases which identify and spotlight barriers.
  3. Functional Use Cases. Use functional use cases, such as Da Vinci, as a foundation for FASTFAST provides the "highways" while the industry efforts, like Da Vinci, provide the cars, trucks, and buses. Uses the "vehicles" to help define the dimensions of the "highway."
2018 - 2019
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