Hospital networks face a choice early in the patient-identity conversation that shapes the next decade of operations. A single-site MPI consolidates all patient records from all participating facilities into one shared database, with one ma
Author: Marcus Chen
Health-tech product analyst from Seattle. Focused on payer interoperability, prior authorization, and where the friction really lives.
Static Forms vs SDC-Driven FHIR Forms for US Practices
The choice between static forms and SDC-driven FHIR Questionnaires is one of those decisions that looks technical at first and turns out to be mostly about organizational shape. A US practice that picks well saves itself months of operation
Cloud-Hosted vs Self-Hosted FHIR Terminology Servers for 2026
The cloud-versus-self-hosted question for a FHIR terminology server in 2026 looks different than it did three years ago. Cloud terminology services have matured to the point where most US healthcare deployments can credibly run on a managed
JaroWinkler vs Soundex for Patient-Name Matching in US Practice
Patient-name matching is the subroutine that most US MPI deployments lean on more than they admit. Strong identifiers (SSN, MRN, government ID) are absent or unreliable for a meaningful fraction of records. Date of birth and address narrow
LHC-Forms vs NLM Form Builder: A Practical Comparison
LHC-Forms and the NLM Form Builder share a common upstream provenance and a deceptively similar surface. Both come out of the National Library of Medicine ecosystem, both target FHIR-aligned form rendering, and both end up on the shortlist
Top 4 Terminology Server APIs for Real-Time Clinical Autocomplete
Real-time clinical autocomplete is the use case that pushes a terminology server hardest. The clinician types two characters, the UI fires a search, the dropdown has to render before the user notices the lag. Every operation in that path ma
4 Patient-Matching Tools That Survive Bad Address Data
Address data is one of the noisier features any patient-matching engine has to work with. Addresses change as patients move, get typo'd by registration staff, lose apartment numbers, swap unit-format conventions, get auto-completed differen
4 FHIR Form Tools That Handle Repeat Groups Without Pain
Repeating groups are the FHIR Questionnaire feature that exposes which form tools were built by people who deployed them to clinicians and which ones were built around the spec without that production feedback. A repeating group lets a user
OntoServer vs Tx-Server: How to Choose for Mid-Size US Hospitals
Choosing between OntoServer and a Tx-Server style deployment is the kind of decision that gets made by mid-size US hospitals every year and quietly shapes terminology operations for the next five. Both are credible FHIR terminology servers.
Translating Clinical Workflow Into FHIR API Load
The gap between a clinical workflow diagram and a FHIR API load number is where a lot of sizing exercises stall out. Workflow designers describe patient journeys; capacity planners want requests per second. Neither side has the vocabulary...