The Standard

 Join two live webinars featuring the 2026 HL7 AI Challenge winners and see how
AI and HL7 standards are being applied to real-world healthcare challenges. 

What does healthcare AI look like when it moves beyond experimentation and into practical, real-world applications?

The winners of the second annual HL7 AI Challengeoffer a glimpse into that future, demonstrating how artificial intelligence and HL7® standards can work together to improve data quality, strengthen clinical intelligence, support better workflows, and make health information more accessible and actionable.

Now, the HL7 community has an opportunity to see these solutions in action.

HL7 International will host two free AI Challenge Winners Showcase webinars on October 14 and October 28, featuring live demonstrations and presentations from the award-winning teams. Moderated by Daniel Vreeman, DPT, HL7 Chief Standards Development Officer and Chief AI Officer, the sessions will take participants behind the solutions and explore how teams are applying AI and interoperability standards to real healthcare challenges.

A Global Look at AI and Interoperability

The 2026 HL7 AI Challenge attracted 73 submissions from 25 countries, more than double the number of entries received during the inaugural Challenge in 2025.

Individuals, companies, academic and research institutions, government organizations, nonprofits, and teams worldwide were invited to demonstrate AI solutions that leverage HL7 standards to improve health, healthcare, and public health.

This year’s awardees tackled a wide range of challenges, including fragmented patient information, clinical decision support, data quality, chronic disease management, AI transparency, and the development of new FHIR®-enabled applications.

“AI innovation in healthcare cannot happen in isolation from the data and infrastructure that support it,” said Daniel Vreeman, DPT, Chief Standards Development Officer and Chief AI Officer of HL7 International. “The solutions recognized through this year’s Challenge demonstrate the many ways innovators are putting HL7 standards to work alongside AI, from improving data quality and clinical intelligence to enabling new applications and workflows.”

The two showcase webinars provide an opportunity to go beyond the award announcements and hear directly from the people who built these solutions.

If you’ve spent any time in healthcare over the past year, you’ve probably felt it: the energy, the urgency, the curiosity around AI. Everywhere you look, teams are experimenting with new models, exploring new use cases and imagining what care could look like if we finally had the right data in the right place at the right time.

But there’s also a shared realization emerging across the industry that AI can’t transform healthcare unless the data behind it is trustworthy, connected and interoperable.

That’s why HL7 International launched the 2026 HL7 AI Challenge, now officially open for submissions through June 30, 2026.

Why an HL7 AI Challenge?

Last year’s inaugural Challenge showed us something powerful: when innovators build on HL7 standards, they can move faster, scale more easily and create solutions that actually work in the messy, real‑world environments where healthcare happens.

Healthcare organizations around the world are experimenting with AI, but many face the same barriers: fragmented data, inconsistent formats, and limited ability to integrate AI outputs into clinical systems. HL7’s standards are designed to address these challenges, making them a natural foundation for safe and effective AI adoption.

The HL7 AI Challenge aims to:

• Encourage innovation grounded in open, widely adopted standards
• Demonstrate how structured, interoperable data improves AI performance
• Highlight real‑world solutions that can scale across organizations and borders

New implementation community builds on global collaboration to improve
real-time device data exchange for AI-enabled care

Imagine a patient in an intensive care unit, monitored by a dozen devices generating streams of critical data every second.  From operating rooms and ICUs to ambulatory clinics and patient homes, clinicians and care teams rely on a growing ecosystem of medical and personal health devices. Now imagine that data is siloed, unable to flow into the EHR and unreachable by the analytics platform that might detect a dangerous trend before a clinician does.

This fragmentation is a well-known challenge in healthcare IT. On March 5, 2026, HL7 International took a major step toward solving it with the launch of the Caliper FHIR® Accelerator, a new implementation community dedicated to improving how data from medical and personal health devices is exchanged, integrated and used across healthcare systems. 

Why Caliper, and Why Now?

Caliper builds on HL7’s 2025 work with founding members to define a collaborative community focused on device interoperability. The need is clear: healthcare organizations are generating more high‑frequency device data than ever, but too often this information cannot flow cleanly into EHRs, analytics platforms or AI‑driven applications.

By leveraging HL7 FHIR alongside established device communication frameworks, Caliper aims to create a scalable, standards‑based foundation for real‑time device data integration. The goal is simple but transformative: ensure that data from critical care equipment and patient‑facing technologies can be shared consistently, reliably and safely.

“Healthcare systems are entering a new phase where access to high-quality, real-time data is essential to safely deploying advanced analytics and AI,” said Rachel Dunscombe, CEO of HL7 International. “The Caliper Accelerator represents an important step forward in ensuring that device-generated data, whether from critical care equipment or patient-facing technologies, can be shared and used consistently across care environments worldwide. This kind of foundational interoperability is critical to improving both clinical outcomes and operational resilience.”

HL7 International has announced the appointment of Patrick (Pat) McGinn, MBA, CAE, as its new Chief Operating Officer (COO), strengthening the organization’s leadership team during a pivotal period of transition.

Pat brings more than 20 years of executive leadership and operational experience across professional associations. He joins HL7 from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), where he most recently served as Director of the Utility Engineering & Surveying Institute, leading strategic planning, program development, education and standards initiatives, and member engagement.

In his role as COO, Pat will oversee HL7’s operational functions, including technology, membership services, and internal operations, while supporting the organization’s global mission to enable safe, scalable health data exchange.

HL7 has announced the appointment of Professor Rachel Dunscombe as its new Chief Executive Officer effective January 19, marking the start of the organization’s next phase of growth in global health data interoperability. She succeeds Charles Jaffe, MD, PhD, who concludes nearly two decades of leadership at HL7.

Rachel brings extensive global experience in digital health, interoperability and standards-based transformation. Prior to joining HL7, she served as CEO of openEHR International, where she helped accelerate worldwide adoption of open health data standards and strengthened collaboration among governments, standards bodies and healthcare organizations.

Her career includes senior roles in healthcare delivery, national digital strategy, executive education and leadership in international standards communities. She has been recognized for her ability to unite diverse stakeholders and advance practical implementation of health data standards at scale.

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.

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.”