Ministry of Health and Welfare Achieves National Medical Data Interoperability via FHIR: Building the Foundation for the AI Era
衛福部FHIR技術跨院病歷互通 - Yahoo新聞
Summary
The Ministry of Health and Welfare established a national foundation for medical data sharing using FHIR technology and national standards, enabling real-time and secure circulation of patient records across hospitals. This advances Taiwan toward a next-generation smart healthcare ecosystem capable of supporting AI clinical decision support.
Details
Facing the global challenge of fragmented hospital information systems (HIS), the Ministry adopted a technical path that maintains existing systems while achieving interoperability through a data middleware layer. Specifically, they implemented the Taiwan Core Data for Interoperability (TWCDI), implementation guides (TW Core IG), and automated FHIR tools to allow standardized, real-time flow of patient records between different hospital systems. Furthermore, they pioneered the 'FHIR Box' concept, integrating functions for data transformation, storage, and exchange. This connects the health data space, health rules space, and health application space, laying the groundwork for automated National Health Insurance reporting, infectious disease reporting, and evidence medicine. In terms of international standards, Taiwan became the first country outside the US to implement national-level coding standards for Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes (LOINC), drug terminology systems (RxNorm), and Large Language Model Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine—Clinical Terms (LLM SNOMED CT). This positions Taiwan as a global hub for trustworthy health data governance and smart healthcare innovation.
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