The Standard

Executives From Allscripts, healow Insights Will Share Their Latest Efforts Using FHIR Guidelines

The Da Vinci Project’s February Community Roundtable to be held Feb. 23 from 4:00 – 5:30 p.m. ET

In this month’s Community Roundtable, the HL7 Da Vinci Project is exploring how EHRs are key to interoperability success with a discussion on electronic health record (EHR) vendors featuring Allscripts and healow Insights. 

The session will showcase how the role of HL7® Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resource (FHIR®) and the Da Vinci implementation guides are impacting their product roadmaps and related integration efforts to improve workflow, maximize efficiencies and improve patient care. Guest speakers will include:

• Jeff Danford, Sr. Principal Software Engineer, Allscripts
• Seth Paradis, Sales and Business Development Manager, Payer Engagement Division, healow Insights

On behalf of the HL7 US Realm Steering Committee (USRSC), we are pleased to share an update on last year's priorities and highlight our focus for 2022.

2021 Highlights

Visibility was a key theme of our work in 2021 and included supporting pilot work on a standards dashboard, tracking accelerator activity and promoting key ballots.

Before we dive into 2022, we want to highlight a few key points for all US Realm (USR) members.

• SMART v2: published new guidance on granular controls
• Bulk Data v2: published with numerous new features 
• Errata release of Consolidated CDA (C-CDA): companion guide to support January 2022 ballot  
• C-CDA Companion Guide: January 2022 ballot to add USCDI v2 guidance
• US FHIR Core - January 2022 ballot: to add USCDI v2 guidance
• Hosted reviews on HL7 Standards Dashboard Prototype
• C-CDA Web Publishing Trial Draft using FHIR Structure Definition
• Facilitated US@ project with ONC team

The CodeX HL7 FHIR Accelerator will host three public calls next week covering project milestones in the Radiation Therapy Treatment Data (RTTD), Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies[i] (REMS) and Prior Authorization in Oncology use cases.

• Join the CodeX Prior Authorization in Oncology team on February 15 (3-4 ET) for an update on its radiation oncology pilot planning. Use case team members will discuss progress relative to breast and prostate cancer patient demographic and clinical data elements discovery and health data standards mapping (e.g., mCODE and Da Vinci Project implementation guides). Find call information here.  
• Join the RTTD team on February 16 (11-12 ET) when they will share recent project achievements, including experience exchanging synthetic patient data using mCODE from a radiation oncology information test system to a FHIR server. Find call information here.
• Join the CodeX REMS team on February 17 (1-2 ET) to explore the value of an interoperable REMS ecosystem using FHIR and other health data standards, view details of the open source REMS on FHIR prototype under development and discuss CodeX membership details and benefits, including driving the REMS use case work forward. Find call information here.

The Da Vinci Project’s January Community Roundtable to be held Jan. 26 from 4:00 – 5:30 p.m. ET

The CodeX team believes the Minimal Common Oncology Data Elements (mCODE™) standard could be leveraged to achieve more equitable health outcomes for cancer patients from diverse populations. As part of our exploration, we are releasing a white paper, “Advancing Health Equity in Cancer Research, Care, and Surveillance,” available here and will host a companion webinar, "Leveraging Interoperability to Drive Health Equity in Cancer Care, Research and Surveillance." Please join us on January 27, 2022 at 1PM ET by registering here.

The Da Vinci Project’s Year-End Meeting to Be Held December 8, 2021

The HL7 Da Vinci Project will hold a combined virtual Community Roundtable and Member Forum on December 8 titled "Are You  Ready for 2022? Hear Progress and Plans, Available Testing tools and Implementation Perspectives." During this meeting,  Da Vinci’s program management office will share insights on the year’s achievements, as well as the latest on strategic planning. They will top it off with a synopsis of Da Vinci’s priorities for 2022.

The agenda includes:

Alliance of government, private sector and philanthropic partners aims to use widely accepted healthcare standard to help advance public health

A new initiative launched by HL7 and jointly supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) seeks to use widely recognized data exchange standards to help advance public health. The effort, called Helios, intends to strengthen the capacity and streamline data sharing across all levels of public health using the HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability (FHIR®) standard.

“Public health has risen in urgency and importance over the last 18 months,” said the ONC’s National Coordinator for Health IT Micky Tripathi, PhD, MPP, “FHIR accelerators have had great success in engaging implementers as early as possible to help identify and overcome longstanding barriers to interoperability. The Helios alliance is a market-based implementation collaboration that will help to ensure FHIR development is coordinated and focused on real world public health needs.”

The initiative is the latest to use HL7’s FHIR Accelerator program, which seeks to speed the development and availability of FHIR to deliver better data that leads to better health outcomes. The Helios alliance represents an ambitious new use of the FHIR Accelerator program, pulling together a diverse group of state, tribal, local, territorial, and Federal public health agencies, private and philanthropic sector partners, and other groups interested in the equitable and effective use of data for the advancement of public health.

Weclome to CodeX's New Patient Voices Series!

CodeX recently talked with cancer patients, survivors, and advocates to hear their stories and learn more about their perspective through the cancer care coordination process. CodeX (Common Oncology Data  Elements eXtensions) is a HL7 FHIR Accelerator, launched at the end of 2019, that is building a community to enable interoperable cancer data modeling and applications that lead to step-change improvements in cancer patient care and research.  

How is the Standard of Care Defined?

“Everyone just said this is the standard of care!” Today, Desiree D. has no evidence of disease, but in 2017 she was diagnosed with stage 2b breast cancer at the age of 40. When trying to make decisions about her course of treatment, Desiree was repeatedly told by doctors that she was getting the standard of care. In reality, the “standard of care” is relatively loose terminology. When making treatment decisions, Desiree felt that the standard of care where she was living in Virginia meant something different than the standard of care in Massachusetts or the standard of care in Vermont. 

Imagine if a chef could not make a soup because he only understood Portuguese and the soup’s instructions were in Hindi. The chef could look elsewhere and find a solution after further research; however, the lack of a common language has cost the chef time and the chef’s soup is not going to be the same as he wished. This scenario is harmless, but a similar and much more serious situation exists across healthcare systems. The healthcare industry remains significantly less standardized than other industries. This means that treatments for the same type of cancer might vary greatly by geographic location, cancer center, and even oncologist in part because healthcare data is not collected or shared in a standard manner.

The Da Vinci Project’s October Community Roundtable, to be held Oct. 27 from 4:00 – 5:30 p.m. EDT, will feature Clinical Data Exchange (CDex)

This “Swiss army knife” of implementation guides (IGs) is responsible for identifying, documenting and constraining specific patterns of exchange so that providers and payers can reliably share patient information and coordinate care.

The scope of the CDex encompasses defining combinations of exchange methods with specific payloads, search criteria, conformance, provenance, and other relevant requirements, to support specific exchanges of clinical information between providers and and/or payers. CDex is also responsible for aiding in risk adjustment and quality reporting--and it helps payers to identify whether a requested service is necessary and appropriate.

The roundtable, titled, “Harnessing Clinical Data Exchange (CDex) to Improve Performance within Value-Based Care,” will give a current snapshot of the functionality, benefits and capabilities of CDex, helping providers to share the clinical data they have generated with payers and other industry partners.

At the roundtable, members of the Providence team will share their strategy for using CDex to support payer value-based care arrangements focusing on their initial target to achieve supplemental data exchange.

Presenters will include:

• Viet Nguyen, MD, Technical Director, HL7 Da Vinci Project, and Clinical Informaticist, Stratametrics, LLC
• Semira Singh, Product Manager, Population Health Informatics, Providence
• Michael Westover, Vice President, Population Health Informatics, Providence

Come to the roundtable and learn how HL7 is making progress on CDex, with its eye on what remains to be conquered to provide the fully maximized data exchange needed to support value-based care. The good news is, HL7® Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resource (FHIR®) is helping to drive interoperability forward, and Da Vinci is poised to accelerate that data exchange in such a way that it will greatly reduce the burden between providers and payers.