Taiwan's Electronic Medical Records Aim for Interoperability This Year; Ministry of Health Promotes Cross-Hospital Use of Medical Apps

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According to the Ministry of Health's Information Department, efforts are underway to solve the problem of 'medical data silos' by promoting the interoperability of electronic health record formats. Previously, due to diverse EHR formats across hospitals, difficulties arose when patients sought treatment at multiple facilities or when technology developed in one hospital struggled to be ported to others. The MOH is advancing the adoption of the 'SMART on FHIR' standard architecture as a solution. This aims to enable medical applications to function like smartphone apps, connecting and utilizing data from various patient sources. The plan involves completing data format interoperability across all university hospitals this year. Subsequently, the rollout will proceed in phases: regional and district hospitals next year, and finally health centers and clinics several years later. The article notes that while there are calls to include FHIR in hospital accreditation standards (suggested by experts like Sinica Academy member Chen Shih-an), the MOH emphasizes that the enthusiasm for promoting FHIR among academic medical centers is strong enough to maintain progress even if formal inclusion in accreditation is delayed. The overall strategy involves a three-stage approach: standard setting, integration with evaluation systems, and legislative promotion, acknowledging that current technological maturity makes immediate legislation premature. This initiative represents a significant step in Taiwan's digital healthcare transformation, building on successful experimental interoperability trials already conducted at institutions like Mackay, Chung Shan, and Chang Gung hospitals.