Reflections from the ADAPT Chief AI Officers on Innovation Panel Discussion, November 2025

After decades of working toward seamless health data interoperability, we find ourselves at another pivotal moment. The rapid adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in healthcare presents us with a familiar challenge wearing a new face: how do we ensure these powerful new tools work together transparently, accountably, and in the service of better health for people everywhere?

At a recent ADAPT conference panel, I had the opportunity to reflect on what our interoperability journey can teach us as we venture into standardizing intelligence, not just data. Here are some key insights from that conversation.

The Journey Continues

First, a grounding perspective: this is a journey, not a destination. Despite all the progress we've made in healthcare interoperability, too often, people still move faster and further than their health information. The ability for any digital tool—including AI—to help people make better health decisions is always limited by the scope of data in its purview and its capability to make sense of it.

Even the most powerful AI we can imagine must overcome the same boundaries we've always faced: technical, organizational, business, and jurisdictional barriers that prevent us from seeing the complete picture of health information relevant for individuals or populations.

However, HL7's decade-plus journey with Fast Health Interoperability Resources (FHIR® ) has taught us something crucial: open standards are a potent fuel for innovation. The vibrant, open, collaborative community around FHIR wasn't just a nice byproduct—it was the key force that created a well-tuned specification and enabled it to flourish in the marketplace.

Open standards level the playing field, reduce barriers to participation, and free organizations from proprietary formats. They unlock new connectivity, preserve data sovereignty, and most fundamentally, enable new digital freedoms. As we approach AI standardization, maintaining this commitment to openness isn't guaranteed, but it's the future we're fighting for.

 Winner of the Transformative Impact in Healthcare Award

What do you do when the people who taught you everything start to forget? My father is fighting Parkinson's and early dementia. My mother manages diabetes and congestive heart failure. My three siblings and I are a team — a family armed with love but disarmed by the chaos of a dozen medications, forgotten instructions, and missed questions. We were losing the battle against complexity, and that feeling is where this story truly begins.

 The seed for what would become Let's Talk Doc was planted six or seven years ago. My friend and partner, Diane Nguyen, and I saw the cracks in the system through our own eyes. I saw it in my parents' home, and she saw it as an immigrant facing the silent fear that a single misunderstood word on a form could alter her family's care. We tried to build something back then, a small solution born from our shared frustrations. But the technology wasn't ready. The idea was a spark, but we couldn't yet build the engine.  

Years passed. Then, earlier this year, Diane reached out. The world had changed. Technology had finally caught up to our ambition. "It's time," she said. "Let's try again."

 This is not a business venture for us. It’s a mission.

October Da Vinci Community Roundtable on October 22 from  4:00 – 5:30 p.m. ET

As healthcare organizations continue to operationalize CMS-0057 requirements, understanding how to align technology, workflows, and policy is more critical than ever. The HL7® Da Vinci Project Community Roundtable, taking place on October 22, 2025, from 4:00 – 5:30 p.m. ET, will bring together industry leaders to share practical, actionable insights on how Da Vinci Implementation Guides (IGs) are transforming interoperability and reducing administrative burden across the healthcare ecosystem.

This month’s session, “Actionable Insights on Improving Burden Reduction, Payer Data Exchange, and Patient Cost Transparency,” will highlight the real-world value of HL7 FHIR®-based standards in improving efficiency, streamlining workflows, and driving measurable progress in value-based care.

What You'll Learn

The last HL7 Da Vinci Community Roundtable explored how regulatory, technical, and business drivers are shaping the future of prior authorization reform, with a focus on implementation strategies and interoperability alignment. That session underscored a key message: collaboration across payers, providers, and vendors is essential for scaling FHIR adoption.

The upcoming October Roundtable builds on that foundation connecting the dots between Burden Reduction, Payer Data Exchange (PDex), and Patient Cost Transparency (PCT) by highlighting Da Vinci’s pilots to show how these efforts can deliver tangible impact. First-hand accounts from Providence and Multicare as well as an update on recent testing work will be featured.    

Winners Recognized for Standards-Based AI Innovation, Collaboration and Real-World Impact

 Today, HL7 announced the winners of its first-annual HL7 AI Challenge, spotlighting innovators developing AI applications powered by open, standards-based frameworks in healthcare. The announcement was made during the morning session of HL7’s 39th Annual Plenary and Working Group Meeting (WGM) in Pittsburgh.

 Judges selected nine honorees from across multiple categories, recognizing innovation, collaboration and real-world impact.

 AI Challenge Overall Awardee Winners

• Robert Lario, PhD (Xzyos.ai) and Kevin Baskin, MD (Vanguard): AI-Conformable Venous Atlas: A Novel Solution for Clinical-Structural Correlation and Medical Device Surveillance
• Verto Health: VERTO Connect: A Solution to Healthcare's Unstructured Data Problem
• Quantek Systems, Inc: DynaMap AI – Active Inference-driven Clinical Workflow Engine

And six honorees were recognized for their contributions in the following specialized categories.

AI Challenge Category Winners

• Pioneer in Healthcare Innovation: (Ignyte Group and Appian) – Bring AI to Work(flow) – Provides robust process improvement throughout the patient lifecycle via AI agentic assistance
• Excellence in AI Transparency & Trust: (Trisotech) – Standardizing Clinical Autonomy: BPM+ Determinism and HL7 Integration for AI Agents
• Interoperability Leadership Award: (Whitefox Cloud Consulting) – Whitefox FHIR Converter
• Open Solution Award: (Omni Health Nexus) – The Intelligent Medical Assistant – Revolutionizing Information Management for Better Care
• Clinical Data Quality & Outcomes Award: (Aidbox Forms from Health Samurai)– AI Assistant for FHIR SDC and Analytics
• Transformative Impact in Healthcare Award: (Let’s Talk Doc) – AI Avatar Patient Communication Platform

Health IT Veteran Leaves Behind Legacy of Shared Data Standards and Interoperability Worldwide

 HL7 announced today that CEO Charles Jaffe, MD, PhD, will step down at the end of year, capping nearly 20 years of organizational leadership.

Under Dr. Jaffe, HL7 strengthened its role as a trusted convener for the global health data community; expanded adoption of foundational data standards, including HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR®), Clinical Document Architecture (CDA® ), and the HL7 Version 2 messaging standard. He oversaw the integration of HL7 standards into federal regulations and championed worldwide implementation of FHIR to enable scalable, interoperable solutions across providers, payers and technology vendors.

 “On behalf of the board of directors, I want to thank Chuck for his outstanding leadership and commitment to HL7 members, partners and employees, as well as his tremendous success guiding the organization through nearly two decades of evolution and growth,” said Julia Skapik, MD, MPH, Chair of the HL7 Board of Directors. “Under his leadership, HL7 has continued to strengthen its role in advancing interoperability and delivering value to the health care community worldwide.”

Since joining the organization as its first CEO in 2007, Jaffe’s tenure has been marked by innovation, strategic expansion and enhanced international collaboration, positioning HL7 as the architect in shared standards development worldwide.

August Community Roundtable Provides Multi-Faceted View of Prior Authorization Regulatory Requirements and Da Vinci Implementation Resources   

For the August HL7 Da Vinci Project Community Roundtable, industry leaders will offer an insightful, holistic discussion targeting those who want to better understand how best to meet prior authorization regulatory requirements aiming to increase efficiency and improve patient outcomes.   

With a focus on the latest developments surrounding the Da Vinci Prior Authorization Implementation Guides (IGs), the session begins with an examination of clinical and business drivers and a level-setting overview of federal and state level-activities impacting prior authorization requirements. Then we highlight technical standards, focusing on the underlying requirements of CMS-0057,  HTI-4 and the current status of the IGs.  The session concludes with how Da Vinci responds to industry needs, fostering a supportive environment for implementation and providing education, resources, and learnings from real-world implementers and piloting opportunities for those on their implementation journey. 

New Group Advances Workflow and Process Interoperability Using HL7^® FHIR^®

HL7 is pleased to announce the official launch of its HL7 Business Process Modeling (BPM) Community of Practice. Now open for membership, the community is dedicated to advancing interoperability, process consistency, and process automation through the use of formal modeling techniques promoting better modeling, sharing, and execution of clinical and administrative workflows across the healthcare ecosystem.

BPM Community of Practice builds upon three open standards-based languages – referenced together as “BPM+”, and include:  

• BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation): For prescriptive workflows
• CMMN (Case Management Model and Notation): For reactive activities
• DMN (Decision Model and Notation): For complex decision-making rules

The use of these standards, in concert, allows inherent ambiguities in natural-language guidelines to be clarified, providing precise, automatable guidance to improve care quality and consistency. Organizations use BPM+ to model and streamline processes, ensuring accurate and scalable healthcare delivery, process consistency, comparability, and repeatability.

“HL7’s focus is on bringing together communities to advance all aspects of interoperability, and that includes workflow and care processes,” said Ken Rubin, Community Coordinator of the HL7 BPM Community of Practice. “This launch marks an important step in providing the healthcare industry with tools, models, and frameworks to manage care processes more effectively, consistently, and collaboratively.”

Dr. Daniel Vreeman Named Chief AI Officer to Drive Organization's Strategic AI Agenda

HL7 has launched an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Office to establish foundational standards for safe, trustworthy AI in healthcare and convene the global community driving this transformation.

The new office positions HL7 at the forefront of healthcare's AI revolution, creating frameworks that ensure emerging technologies are trusted, explainable, interoperable, and scalable across clinical, operational, and research settings worldwide.

"Artificial intelligence will fundamentally reshape healthcare delivery, evaluation, and payment," said Charles Jaffe, MD, PhD, CEO of HL7 International. "Our new AI Office positions HL7 as the trusted global convener for responsible, standards-driven AI innovation—ensuring these transformative technologies deliver on their promise to improve health for all."

To lead this initiative, HL7 has appointed Daniel Vreeman, DPT, as its first Chief AI Officer (CAIO). Dr. Vreeman will expand his current role as Chief Standards Development Officer to drive HL7's comprehensive AI strategy, including the HL7 AI Challenge, anti-fraud initiatives, and collaborations with regulators and industry partners globally.