 This is another video brought to you by the Open Group Healthcare Forum. Please visit us at www.opengroup.org. FIM, the Federated Health Information Model, advancing healthcare interoperability by harmonizing standards. Thanks to rapid 21st century technology developments. Today we use all kinds of digital products that transfer key information to help us do things we value, like managing our finances, shopping online, finding a flight, booking a place to stay, reserving transit, keeping up with family and friends, and last but not least, managing our health and healthcare. Unfortunately, transferring healthcare information among all of those who need it often feels like being stuck in a time warp. Consider, for example, Mr. John Smith. John is a 70-year-old retired veteran who lives on a modest pension with his wife, Mary. He suffers from multiple health problems, heart disease, chronic low back pain, obesity, borderline diabetes, and bouts of depression. When John begins to experience moderate chest pain, his internist refers him to a cardiologist. When John and Mary arrive at the office, they are given page after page of forms to fill out about John's health, insurance, and basic demographics. They complete them while knowing the same information already exists in the EHR at its primary care physician's office. Imagine their frustration. Why couldn't this information be sent electronically to the new cardiologists? Of course, the answer is that most EHRs don't easily talk to one another. They don't interoperate. Everyone is handicapped by poor interoperability in healthcare. Most healthcare stakeholders experience information sharing challenges every day. For example, clinical staff know they don't always have the most up-to-date patient information. Yet they need to make decisions in real time. Not having information needed to provide high-value care is frustrating and costly. Sometimes the source of frustration is too much information. Providers often have to scour through detailed clinical narratives, looking for key information to gain an accurate picture of their patient's health care needs. As a result, clinicians often lack confidence in the information they use to make vital decisions with their patients. We need better solutions to help information flow securely and timely so patients can receive the highest value healthcare possible. At the heart of this problem is lack of standards agreement. Consider a real-life example of what can happen in the absence of agreed-on standards. Our story goes back over 100 years ago to Baltimore, Maryland, the fifth largest U.S. city at the time. One summer's day, back in 1904, a small fire began to spread through Baltimore so quickly that local fire departments called for help from surrounding areas. Naturally, neighboring firefighters responded. They came with fire trucks and hoses ready to extinguish the flames and limit the damage. However, their hoses did not fit the fire plugs in Baltimore. With no standard size for couplings, water could not be transported to the flames. Firefighters stood by helplessly as the fire burned out of control and much of central Baltimore burned down in what became the third largest fire disaster in American history. Unlike the Baltimore example, the primary barrier to gaining standards agreement in healthcare today is not physical or technical, rather, it's economic and social. Alas, it's easier to create new standards than to build consensus on making existing standards work. Fortunately, compatibility among healthcare standards does not mean that everyone needs to use the same standard. As long as standards are mapped to a common logical information model, they can work together and information can flow. This is the purpose and promise of the Federated Health Information Model. The FEM is an expandable health information model and different standards can be mapped to it. By providing a common map for different standards, the FEM can harmonize standards developed by different organizations. The FEM provides a detailed map of healthcare information put into distinct groupings or domains. This map of health information and associated standards can be used to increase interoperability so health information is available when and where it is needed. The result is more efficient healthcare systems, better care and improved patient outcomes, and much less frustration for providers and for patients and caregivers like John and Mary Smith.