Ophthalmology Implementation Guide
0.2.0 - CI Build
Ophthalmology Implementation Guide - Local Development build (v0.2.0). See the Directory of published versions
This project aims to increase maturation and adoption of HL7-FHIR data exchanges.
This overarching goal is to develop a suite of projects and comprehensive implementation guides to serve the interoperability requirements of the ophthalmic community. The 2 scenarios described below.
The overarching goal is to define and standardize the means through which all types of eye care and general medical providers can communicate between themselves for the betterment of the patient, as well as to and from the patients themselves. Decentralisation and remote monitoring of healthcare (and eye-care in particular) service provision is increasingly becoming necessary and feasible due to increasing disease burden, unsustainable demand, the chronic nature of diseases of eye diseases and our ageing population. Many common eye conditions can be effectively managed with low acuity monitoring. However, even scenarios requiring discrete episodes (eg cataract surgery) or urgent care still require standardized means of communications.
To handle the supply/demand mismatch, we are seeing increasing popularity of shared care models between ophthalmologists and optometrists (the 2 scenarios described below), as well as the emergence of high quality validated remote monitoring devices, that can either be utilized at home by the patient or in a primary care / pharmacy care setting. As ophthalmology as become a near imaging-dependent specialty, artificial intelligence automation has served to accelerate patient and provider acceptance of technology-driven management paradigm shifts. For example, the first FDA-approved autonomously diagnostic medical device was an algorithmic screening tool that automates the detection of referable diabetic retinopathy. In the aforementioned collaborative care models, both provider types often use the same few devices, and track the same clinical variables, yet lack a means of communicating them. Therefore, as the provider care system and management increasingly fragments, there is a greater need than ever to standardize and define data exchanges for the betterment of patient care continuity, data capture to fuel ongoing research and outcome monitoring.