LAS VEGAS — FHIR holds great promise to solve the problems that continue to slow interoperability. But as software is developed to provide the bridges between systems, developers are learning that ambiguities in how the FHIR specification is interpreted can become a bottleneck.

In the words of Andre Quina, lead healthcare software systems engineer for MITRE Corp., “having a standard alone isn’t enough to achieve interoperability. Ambiguities in the standard can be disastrous.”

[Also: See photos from Day 1 of HIMSS16]

Quina, speaking at the Federal Health IT Pavilion at HIMSS16, demonstrated Crucible, a tool that was created to help developers identify errors in FHIR applications. Funding from MITRE Corp. has made it possible for the software to be offered as an open-source project with an Apache license. Using the web interface at ProjectCrucible.org, a developer can run 228 test suites that include over 2,000 tests of the FHIR specification.

Crucible provides a visual interface to display test results indicating Pass-Fail results for FHIR operations. The results are categorized by API, resources and administrative. Graphical representation shows a map to help you identify where the bugs are hiding. When you dig down into the results, the tool shows specific code snippets where the operation failed, displaying the application code and the server response.

The Projectcrucible.org website allows anyone to run tests on their own server or on sample testbed systems. 

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This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.