Yujin Kim
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3 min read
Building on Experience for FHIR Interoperability

Looking back on my six years as a software engineer, I realize that the lessons I learned along the way now guide me as I transition into a role as a FHIR interoperability engineer.

Motivation

I began my career as a software engineer and closely worked with data exchange. I realized that healthcare data interoperability can directly impact public health. At the same time, my growing understanding of healthcare systems fuels my drive to make technology truly work for clinicians and patients.

I want to apply my knowledge of hands-on experience in healthcare data and take courses in health informatics and public health to implement and optimize FHIR standards.


Graduate & Continuing Studies

As a software engineer, I’ve worked with a variety of data, and I became especially interested in healthcare data because it’s sometimes difficult to connect and fully utilize. Healthcare directly affects individual and public health. I felt that it would be important to understand how health data is collected and used effectively. This was the reason that I decided to start a master’s degree in epidemiology.

For my master’s thesis, I analyzed a large-scale healthcare dataset. I realized data standardization and data interoperability are crucial in healthcare.

During medical informatics class during my master’s studies, I had a chance to learn about FHIR, and I was interested in the topic. I tried a data exchange flow with Mirth Connect. The concept was familiar to me because I had previous work experience with asynchronous messaging systems.

Skills

  • Analyzing large-scale healthcare datasets
  • Public health domain knowledge
  • Healthcare interoperability and data exchange (HL7, FHIR)
  • Interface engine experience (Mirth Connect)

Full-Stack Web Development & Cloud Infrastructure

As a full-stack engineer, I developed web applications using React, JavaScript, TypeScript, and Node.js. Furthermore, I built microservices and worked with Kubernetes for scalable and resilient infrastructures. I also created pipelines to collect logs and metrics with Fluentd, Prometheus, and Grafana.

I built real-time and asynchronous data pipelines using RabbitMQ, AMQP, and MQTT among IoT devices, which gave me hands-on experience in designing event-driven architectures and managing data flows.

Skills

  • DevOps, CI/CD, and Cloud Infrastructure
  • Asynchronous Messaging Systems (RabbitMQ)
  • Log Monitoring and Observability (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, etc.)
  • Web Development (frontend & backend)
  • RESTful API Design and Integration
  • SQL and NoSQL Databases

Conclusion

From these lessons, I would like to help systems share data securely and flawlessly in healthcare, which would ultimately improve patient outcomes.