Leading Healthcare Stakeholders Commit to Real-World Testing of HL7’s FHIR Bulk Data Implementation Guide

On July 30, as part of the second Blue Button Developers Conference at the White House, a broad coalition of health systems, health plans, and other health IT stakeholders committed to real-world testing of the soon to be published  HL7® FHIR® Bulk Data implementation guide (IG). 

The announcement was made on stage by HL7 International CEO Dr. Charles Jaffe, later joined by Steven Posnack from ONC and Dr. Shafiq Rab of Rush University System for Health. More than 20 early adopters who have committed to advance this important use of HL7 FHIR were identified.

Much of the focus around HL7 FHIR APIs to date has involved  transactions representing  a single patient. While those use cases are important, especially for patients desiring more seamless access to their data via their smartphones, the FHIR Bulk Data Implementation Guide (IG) unleashes FHIR’s potential to revolutionize population health by enabling new services powered by big data. The standardized approach offered by the Bulk Data IG is being used by CMS in its new Data at the Point of Care (DPC) pilot and could help transform the ways healthcare providers and health plans share data for quality improvement and cost accountability.

The Bulk Data IG is the result of a two-year effort funded by ONC’s cooperative agreement with HL7 in partnership with the SMART team at Boston Children’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School.

The following organizations will participate in real-world testing of the HL7 FHIR Bulk Data IG, and Steven noted ONC’s willingness to support these organizations. Participants will collaborate on providing a common set of artifacts, tools and services with an aim to lower standards implementation costs by making them as reusable and transferable as practicable.

Committed organizations include:

Signed,

Charles Jaffe, MD, PhD
HL7 International CEO 

Steven Posnack, MS, MHS
Executive Director, Office of Technology, ONC