The Standard

Communities Advancing FHIR and Healthcare Interoperability Formalize Joint Efforts for the Public Good

HL7 and The Sequoia Project, a non-profit and trusted advocate for nationwide health information technology (health IT) interoperability, are pleased to announce a strategic collaboration to advance global health data interoperability by accelerating the adoption of the HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR®) standards in the U.S.

“We are thrilled to announce this alliance with HL7,” said Mariann Yeager, CEO of The Sequoia Project. “We look forward to working with HL7, alongside private and public sector subject matter experts, to advance nationwide FHIR implementation to improve interoperability nationwide.”

 HL7 and The Sequoia Project will work together to accelerate the HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR®) standard through coordinating with the work of FHIR at Scale Taskforce HL7 FHIR^® Accelerator (FAST).

Through this strategic relationship, HL7 and The Sequoia Project aim to continue working together in areas of mutual interest, including standards deployment and adoption, alignment between HL7 FHIR Accelerator projects and Sequoia initiatives, and creating a feedback loop to HL7 based on lessons learned from real-world production-level exchange initiatives, education, and testing. 

“At HL7, we are delighted to continue the journey toward meaningful interoperability with The Sequoia Project,” said Charles Jaffe, M.D., Ph.D., HL7 CEO. “Close collaboration is certain speed to market health IT interoperability improvements to reduce the strain on health systems, diminish clinician burden, and improve the lives of our patients.” 

Mark Your Calendar: Inaugural FAST Focus Webinar on FHIR Infrastructure Work 

Greetings, all interested in advancing healthcare through smart technology and robust infrastructure! We are thrilled to announce the launch of the FAST Focus, a quarterly webinar series that aims to keep you informed about and engaged with the work of FHIR at Scale Taskforce (FAST). You are invited to join us for the inaugural FAST Focus webinar on March 7, 2024, from 4 PM to 5 PM ET!  

Event Details

• Date and Time: March 7, 2024, 4 PM-5 PM ET 

 Speakers: 

• Alex Kontur, Public Health Analyst, Office of the National Coordinator (ONC)
• Duncan Weatherston, CEO of Smile Digital Health and Co-Chair of FAST
• David Pyke, Technical Director, FAST

 Moderator: Alix Goss, Senior Consultant, Point-of-Care Partners

The first FAST Focus Webinar will provide a deep dive into FAST's history, its pivotal role in crafting a framework for scalable FHIR infrastructure, and its current community focus. This event is not just about history; it's a glimpse into the future of health IT, revealing key projects that FAST has in the pipeline and providing a roadmap for how you can actively engage with our work. As an interactive session, we'll reserve time for a Q&A at the end to address your burning queries. Registrants will have the opportunity to submit questions when registering.  

February Roundtable also features Payer Data Exchange and Burden Reduction Overviews

This week’s HL7 Da Vinci Project Community Roundtable, “HL7 Da Vinci Implementation Guides Solve Your Real-World Business Problems: Postable Remittance, Payer Data Exchange and Burden Reduction Overviews,” is scheduled for Feruary 28 from 4 – 5:30 p.m. ET. 

Da Vinci leaders will introduce the newest use case focusing on postable remittance advice and will share an overview of the Implementation Guides that are suggested in the proposed rules and how they meet the rules’ objectives.

With the issuance of the new federal interoperability rules, the innovative interoperability work advanced by the HL7 Da Vinci Project is once again being recognized as a path forward for game-changing industry transformation that will reduce burden, increase automation and improve care. You will learn how to access the resources, participate in community feedback and start getting involved.

The presenters will include:

• Robert Dieterle, HL7 Da Vinci Project Sr. Advisor and Burden Reduction Lead
• Naomi Miao, Business Operations Manager, athenahealth
• Mark Scrimshire, PDex Project Lead & Implementation Guide Lead, HL7 Da Vinci Project, and Chief Interoperability Officer, Onyx Health

The session is moderated by Alix Goss, HL7 Da Vinci Project PMO, and Senior Consultant, Point-of-Care Partners.

5 Tips for Getting Your App/Pilot/Project from Idea to Implementation

Are you ready to identify healthcare partners for your real-world pilot?

Have an app developed, but don’t know how to break into healthcare?

Or, perhaps you’ve received a “yes” from healthcare, but now find yourself in a spiral of administrative approvals.

We all have impactful, valuable projects; however, at least in the case of healthcare, we are navigating an industry facing myriad challenges – financial pressure, staff shortages, regulatory compliance. Make it easy for them to work with you and you’ll find a smoother path forward.

At HL7's January’s FHIR Connectathon and Working Group Meeting, Adele Stewart and Elizabeth Sprouse of Double Lantern Informatics hosted the education session “From Ghosted to Welcomed: Developing FHIR-based solutions with healthcare technology acceptance in mind.” Here are five tips from their talk. Want the rest of the scoop? Catch the full talk here.

1. Understand workflow implications.

Build relationships with people in clinical informatics. These individuals will often help you understand workflow implications to your project that must be considered, such as:

• Will you need to save data back to the electronic health record?
• If you need to save back to the chart, how do you navigate this?
  • Where will it be saved?
  • Does the project involve a note that needs to be signed and/or support co-signature?
  • Does a Health Information Management committee need to be involved?
• Does your solution involve a clinical alert? At the healthcare site, is clinical committee review needed for new alerts?
• How will your project alter the current workflow and what training and communications must accompany go-live?

January Roundtable also features Providence’s Clinical Data Exchange Implementation Journey

Are you interested in hearing federal officials provide an overview of the CMS Interoperability and Prior Authorization Final Rule (CMS-0057)?

If so, register now for next week’s HL7 Da Vinci Project Community Roundtable, “CMS Interoperability Final Rule Overview and a Clinical Data Exchange Success Story: How Standardization Improves Value Based Care Performance,” scheduled for Jan. 24 from 4 – 5:30 p.m. ET.

The HL7 Da Vinci Project is thrilled to have CMS join next Wednesday’s Community Roundtable to offer highlights of the final rule in addition to the scheduled program showcasing Providence’s Da Vinci Clinical Data Exchange (CDex) Implementation Guide implementation journey.

Providence became the first major health system to implement CDex standards, and their journey included piloting with Premera Blue Cross and the vetting and approval by internal quality teams and external Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS) auditors. The session concludes with a discussion of benefits experienced using CDex, including improved decision making, reduced burden, improved patient outcomes and enhanced quality of care to patients.

The Da Vinci Project is a private-sector initiative that accelerates the adoption of HL7 FHIR as the standard to support and integrate value-based care (VBC) data exchange across communities. The goal of the project is to help payers and providers positively impact clinical, quality, cost and care management outcomes, enabling providers to see the right data at the right time for patient-centered care.

The presenters will include:

• Lorraine Doo, Senior Policy Advisory,Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Service
• Alex Mugge, Deputy Chief Health Informatics Officer, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Service
• Semira Singh, Director, Population Health Informatics, Providence  
• Michael Westover, Vice President, Population Health, Providence 

The session will be  moderated by Alix Goss, HL7 Da Vinci Project PMO, and Senior Consultant, Point-of-Care Partners.

2023 Accomplishments Position Industry for Year Ahead

Substantial progress has been made this year on HL7 Da Vinci Project Implementation Guides (IGs), which describe how to use HL7’s Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (HL7 FHIR®) standard for exchanging data to support value-based healthcare and implementations of the guides.

Sizing Up Accomplishments

At the December Da Vinci Community Roundtable, Hans Buitendijk, Da Vinci Project Steering Committee Vice Chair, reviewed progress this year and offered an outlook for 2024.

“We have a number of organizations across the spectrum that have adopted one or more of our [FHIR implementation] capabilities. … That's fantastic in the short number of years that this initiative started to look at what is necessary to make it happen,” Buitendijk said.

“We currently have about eight publishing updates that have been accomplished and quite a few ballot processes that are in flight and being planned for, and there is a good amount of commitment to making this happen. So, we really need to be proud of what we have achieved to date, and particularly in the last year.”

In the year ahead, alignment with emerging regulations, including the final CMS Interoperability Rule, will be a top priority, he pointed out.

Interoperability efforts must go beyond a general set of data to ensure adequate support for public health, research, quality measures and more, he added. “We are all going to impact the ability and the opportunity to share more data over time,” he said.

The key to advancing interoperability by leveraging FHIR, he stressed, is to involve many different parties and develop “the same language where we have a minimum set of capabilities that everybody can support, and leaving room … to grow, to explore, to define new things.”

He also pointed out: “We must continuously raise the bar for what we can exchange and determine what is relevant across many different stakeholders that we should all do in the same way … because the data that we have covered so far is still only a part of the variety of data exchanges that are relevant and can benefit from improvements."

Register Now for January Virtual FHIR Connectathon and Gain Perspective from a New Participant: the Value-Based Performance Reporting Use Case Co-Lead

Those interested in gaining a better understanding of how the HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resource (FHIR®) standard works – and helping to develop specification refinements – should consider attending the upcoming connectathon, which will be held online January 16-18, 2024.

“Connectathons can be an effective way for organizations to initiate or advance their FHIR capabilities,’ Viet Nguyen, MD, HL7 Da Vinci Project Technical Director and HL7 Chief Implementation Officer, says.

Nguyen notes that the numerous tracks within the connectathon event allows organizations to pick and choose which tracks they want to emphasize based on their regulatory or strategic needs.

First-time HL7 FHIR Connectathon participant Teresa Younkin, HL7 Value-Based Performance Reporting (VBPR) Project Co-Lead and Senior Consultant at Point-of-Care Partners, attended the September 2023 event. She says, “The value of the connectathons is to actually get to see the systems work and move from the theoretical to the concrete.”

According to Younkin, connectathons are an opportunity to bridge the gap between the technical and the business. It goes beyond just exchanging bits and bytes; instead, you can see in real time how the data could be ingested and utilized in an organization. Many reference implementations have simple interfaces to make computer code human readable. Having the ability to physically see how this data exchange impacts workflows opens cross functional dialogs, addressing communication gaps that traditionally exist between technical teams and business teams.

Discussion offers insights on real-world implementations of Da Vinci’s Implementation Guides

Join us on Wednesday, December 6, from 4 – 5:30 p.m. EST for the December Community Roundtable presentation titled, “A Year of Active Implementation: HL7 Da Vinci Project Year-end Review and 2024 Plans.”

At this combined Member Forum, Operating Committee and Community Roundtable, Da Vinci Project leaders will share the latest on use case progress and implementations, regulatory response and alignment, and how HL7 FHIR brings value to implementers and the marketplace. The session will conclude with considerations and opportunities for 2024.

Presenters will be:

• Hans Buitendijk, HL7 Da Vinci Project Steering Committee Vice Chair, and Director, Interoperability Strategy, Oracle Health
• Crystal Kallem, Project Manager, HL7 Da Vinci Project, and Senior Consultant, Point-of-Care Partners
• Jocelyn Keegan, Program Manager, HL7 Da Vinci Project, and Payer/Practice Lead, Point-of-Care Partners

The moderator will be Alix Goss, HL7 Da Vinci Project PMO, and Senior Consultant, Point-of-Care Partners.

 

After 32 years of serving HL7 International as the Executive Director, Mark McDougall will retire at the end of this year. HL7 leadership would like to acknowledge Mark's significant contributions to the organization across the decades.

Andy Truscott, FHL7, HL7 Board Chair states, "Mark's unwavering commitment and visionary leadership have been pivotal in advancing healthcare standards and interoperability across our organization. As Executive Director, Mark consistently demonstrated an extraordinary dedication to our mission. His ability to navigate the ever-evolving landscape of healthcare informatics and standards development has been instrumental in shaping HL7 into the dynamic organization it is today. Mark's passion for improving healthcare outcomes through enhanced interoperability has not only guided our work but has served as an inspiration to us all.

As Mark prepares to embark upon retirement, we wish him all the best in his future endeavors. His legacy within HL7 will be enduring, shaping the way we approach healthcare standards and data exchange for years to come.

We acknowledge and honor his exemplary service and commitment to our cause. Thank you, Mark, for your invaluable contributions, and we wish you a retirement filled with happiness, health and new adventures."