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
| Artifact | Description | Date |
|---|---|---|
| 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:
| 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. | 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 Barriers | FAST 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:
| 2018 - 2019 |