The Standard

Health Tech Ecosystem Co-Chairs, CMS and Da Vinci Leaders Discuss Electronic Prior Authorization Oct. 28

Interoperability is not achieved through standards alone. Success requires an ecosystem of healthcare stakeholders working together to align policy, technology, workflow, and implementation. For electronic prior authorization (ePA), that raises a practical question: how can the industry work collectively to move from readiness to real-world adoption?

Join the HL7 Da Vinci Project for the October Community Roundtable on Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2026, from 4 – 5:30 p.m. ET. This session will feature Zac Jiwa and Alexander Dzeda, representatives from CMS, who will provide an overview of the ecosystem approach and a policy perspective on the evolving prior authorization landscape. The co-chairs of the Health Tech Ecosystem’s Electronic Prior Authorization subcommittee, Kara Justi of Cleveland Clinic, and Jocelyn Keegan of Aetna, will discuss its role in accelerating ePA adoption across the industry.

The program concludes with a panel discussion on industry readiness, implementation challenges, and opportunities for collaboration. Panelists will discuss how stakeholders can work together to deliver on the promise of streamlined, patient-centered prior authorization.

Featured Presenters

• Ryan Bohochik, Vice President of Value-Based Care, Epic
• Alexander Dzeda, Health Interoperability Expert, Digital Service, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)
• Zac Jiwa, Senior Advisor, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)
• Kara Justi, IT Director, Population Health and Interoperability, Cleveland Clinic
• Jocelyn Keegan, Vice President, Interoperability, Aetna, a CVS Health Company
• Moderator: Casey Thompson, HL7 Da Vinci Project Program Manager; Consultant, Point-of-Care Partners

Whether you represent a provider organization, payer, health IT developer, or implementation partner, this session will highlight how collective action across the health tech ecosystem can help deliver on the promise of streamlined, patient-centered prior authorization.

 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.

CMS, ONC & Industry Leaders Deliver Comprehensive ePA Update Sept. 30

Electronic prior authorization (ePA) has moved beyond concept and pilot testing. Payers, providers, and vendors are now actively in production or building toward production. That shift raises a natural question for the industry: where does the industry stand today, and what's the path from here?

Join the HL7 Da Vinci Project for the September Community Roundtable on Wednesday, September 30, 2026, from 4 – 5:30 p.m. ET. This session will provide a concise overview of the latest regulatory and policy developments, including updates on federal activities, followed by the current status of the Da Vinci Prior Authorization Implementation Guides, pilots and related resources that are helping organizations prepare for implementation.

Featured Presenters

• Karen Ashton, MultiCare Connected Care
• Michael Gould, ZeOmega and HL7 Da Vinci Project Architecture Group
• David Koppel, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)
• Lloyd McKenzie, Dogwood Health Consulting and HL7 Da Vinci Project
• Jeffery Smith, Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC)
• Denise St. Clair, Global Alliant Inc and HL7 Da Vinci Project PMO
• Moderator: Casey Thompson, HL7 Da Vinci Project Program Coordinator; Consultant, Point-of-Care Partners

Participants will learn about industry readiness efforts, implementation support resources, and the growing ecosystem of tools available through Da Vinci. The session will explore the latest ePA capabilities, including current and emerging implementation guide versions, highlighting how organizations are advancing from planning to real-world deployment.

The program concludes with a panel discussion where panelists will share lessons learned, discuss known implementation challenges, explore how industry stakeholders are collaborating to achieve scalable success, and provide insight into the evolution of standards and future versions of the Da Vinci implementation guides.

Whether your organization is just beginning its ePA journey or already moving into production, this session will provide practical guidance, implementation perspectives, and a clear view of where electronic prior authorization is headed next.

Three Industry Leaders Highlight Best Practices on August 26

As health data exchange expands nationwide, overcoming technical and operational barriers requires strong cross-industry alignment. Establishing scalable, patient-centered interoperability depends on bridging the gaps between technical standards, policy efforts, and practical implementation.

Join the HL7 Da Vinci Project for the August Community Roundtable on Wednesday, August 26, 2026 from 4 – 5:30 p.m. ET, featuring industry leaders from the HL7 Da Vinci Project, The Sequoia Project’s Interoperability Matters initiative and FHIR at Scale Taskforce (FAST). Hear exclusive updates on recent Da Vinci milestones and community engagement opportunities, followed by an in-depth panel discussion on how real-world collaboration enables scalable health data exchange.

Featured Presenters

• Didi Davis, Vice President, Informatics, Conformance & Interoperability, The Sequoia Project
• Janice Reese, FAST Program Manager; Senior Consultant, Point-of-Care Partners
• Casey Thompson, HL7 Da Vinci Project Program Coordinator; Consultant, Point-of-Care Partners

Uniting Standards, Policy, and Implementation

Attendees will gain actionable implementation experiences, lessons learned, and emerging best practices to build trusted, scalable infrastructure and align workflows with regulatory requirements. The discussion will highlight how cross-industry collaboration overcomes critical friction points, including patient identity, authorization, consent, endpoint discovery, data quality, data usability, and workflow alignment, while opening practical opportunities to participate in upcoming pilots and testing.

Key takeaways include:

• Why scalable, secure infrastructure matters for nationwide exchange
• How technical standards and clinical workflows work together in practice
• The pivotal role of data quality and usability in meaningful interoperability
• Opportunities to participate in real-world testing and pilots
• Actionable ways to learn more and get involved in ongoing initiatives

Whether you are a payer, provider organization, health IT vendor, or regulatory stakeholder, this session offers emerging best practices and practical lessons learned to support compliance, boost efficiency, and improve patient-centered data exchange.

The HL7® Da Vinci Project is proud to recognize five outstanding healthcare technology leaders as its 2025 Da Vinci Community Champions. These individuals have demonstrated exceptional leadership in advancing healthcare interoperability, fostering collaboration, and driving the real-world implementation of HL7® Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR®) standards.

As an HL7 FHIR Accelerator, the Da Vinci Project brings together organizations across the healthcare ecosystem to improve care delivery through standards-based data exchange. By accelerating FHIR adoption, Da Vinci helps reduce administrative burden, automate workflows, support value-based care, and ultimately improve health outcomes.

Recognizing Leaders Advancing Healthcare Interoperability

Each year, the Da Vinci Community Champions program honors individuals whose contributions embody the collaborative spirit that drives the project forward. Nominated by their peers, these champions represent the diverse voices of the Da Vinci community—including health plans, health systems, accountable care organizations (ACOs), government agencies, and health IT vendors.

Their work helps shape and implement practical FHIR-based solutions that make healthcare more connected, efficient, and patient-centered.

The 2025 HL7 Da Vinci Community Champions are:

• Chris Cioffi, IT Business System Analyst Senior Advisor, Elevance Health
• Durwin Day, Health Information Manager, Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC) – Retired
• Lorraine Doo, Director, Health Informatics and Interoperability Group, Office of Healthcare Experience and Interoperability, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) – Retired
• November Valentine, Software Developer, Payer Platform, Epic
• Jason Vogt, Manager, Development – Interoperability API & Structured Documents, MEDITECH

"Honorees were nominated by peers across the Da Vinci community, making the recognition especially meaningful," said Anna Taylor, chair of the HL7 Da Vinci Project Steering Committee and associate vice president of population health and value-based care at MultiCare Connected Care.

Taylor also reflected on the loss of one of this year's honorees.

"This year's announcement is bittersweet, as one of our Champions, Durwin Day, recently passed away. His decades-long leadership and foundational contributions to the HL7 Da Vinci Project leave a legacy and lasting impact on standards-based data exchange across the healthcare ecosystem as well as our Da Vinci community."

Join the HL7 Da Vinci Project for the June Community Roundtable on Wednesday, June 24, 2026 from 4 – 5:30 p.m. ET, when representatives from the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (BCBSA) and Itiliti Health will share a compelling case study in policy digitization and HL7 FHIR® questionnaire standardization aligned to the Da Vinci Documentation Templates and Rules (DTR) Implementation Guide.

Featured Presenters

• Dr. Razia Hashmi, MD, MPH, FAAFP, Vice President of Clinical Affairs, Blue Cross Blue Shield Association
• Michael Lunzer, Co-Founder and CEO, Itiliti Health
• Casey Thompson, HL7 Da Vinci Project Program Coordinator; Consultant, Point-of-Care Partners
• Moderator: Alix Goss, HL7 Da Vinci Project Program Manager; Senior Consultant, Point-of-Care Partners

From Policy to Practice: A Scalable Approach to DTR

Before diving into the technical session, the Da Vinci Project will provide a few updates and recognize the 2025 HL7 Da Vinci Project Community Champions. These individuals’ display the unique traits of “industry above self, a passion for making the healthcare system work better, supporting others, and promoting change.”

The heart of the June session is a real-world case study exploring how BCBSA is digitizing and centralizing reference medical policies and aligning them to standardized HL7 FHIR Questionnaires built on the Da Vinci DTR Implementation Guide. This reusable approach improves consistency in provider documentation collection while preserving local autonomy for implementation decisions. Topics will include:

• How policy digitization enables questionnaire creation
• Key considerations for distributing standardized DTR questionnaires
• Governance and quality guardrails that support scale

Whether you're a payer advancing DTR adoption, a vendor building questionnaire tooling, or a provider organization preparing for what's ahead, this session offers concrete, actionable insights from organizations that have already done the work.

Join the Discussion

📅 Date: Wednesday, June 24, 2026
🕓 Time: 4:00 – 5:30 p.m. ET
💻 Location: Virtual (Free & open to the public)
🔗 Register here: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_f4TEb4cYSKe4koDNyrvdpg#/registration

We encourage you to review prior sessions' recordings for additional context.

Today we honor the life and legacy of Clement J. McDonald, MD, who passed away on May 21, 2026.

Known worldwide as the one and only "Clem", he was a luminary in the field of biomedical informatics. Clem was a titan, world renowned for his innovations in electronic medical records, clinical decision support, multi-institution health data exchange, and especially in the global standards that enable computers to share and understand health data.

As a co-founder and life-long member of HL7 International, Clem's vision for interoperability enabled by consensus standards is encoded in our DNA.

A Pioneering Career

Clem grew up on Chicago's West Side, graduated from Notre Dame in three years, and attended the University of Illinois College of Medicine. He completed his internal medicine residency at Cook County Hospital and the University of Wisconsin, after which he joined Indiana University and the Regenstrief Institute in 1972. There he built one of the world's first electronic medical record systems and published the first randomized controlled trials demonstrating that computerized clinical decision support could improve care.

He rose through the academic ranks at the Indiana University School of Medicine to become Distinguished Professor of Medicine and the Sam Regenstrief Professor of Medical Informatics, and served as Director of the Regenstrief Institute from 1990 to 2006. He also developed the Indiana Network for Patient Care, a groundbreaking statewide health information exchange. Throughout this time, he also practiced primary care internal medicine in a safety-net clinic for more than 25 years (that ran on the EMR he created).

In 2004, Clem joined the U.S. National Library of Medicine where he first served as Director of the Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications and Scientific Director of its intramural research program, and later serving as Chief Health Data Standards Officer — a position he held until his passing.

May Community Roundtable on May 27 Offers More Insight into Proposed Rule and Payer Data Exchange

As the industry prepares for the next wave of healthcare interoperability, the HL7 Da Vinci Project is dedicated to providing the community with the insights and tools necessary for success. With newly proposed regulatory frameworks, the stakes for technical and operational alignment have never been higher. Join us for the May Community Roundtable on Wednesday, May 27, 2026, from 4 – 5:30 p.m. ET to prepare for what’s next.

What You’ll Learn

While our April session established the foundational context for the new federal rule (CMS-0062-P), the May session builds on the momentum by moving from initial impressions to active implementation strategies. We will provide a focused update of the community’s considerations regarding the 2026 Interoperability Standards and Prior Authorization for Drugs proposed rule, specifically focusing on the Payer Data Exchange (PDex), PDex Plan Net, and Member Attribution (ATR) List Implementation Guides (IGs) called out in the rule.

Real-World Perspectives & Demonstrations

Following the policy discussion, you will hear directly from implementers successfully deploying these standards in real-world payer environments:

• Onyx: Discover how their implementations focus on moving data out of silos into standardized formats, providing endpoints for payers to make data available via HL7 FHIR IGs.
• Availity: Watch a live demo of core PDex workflows, including member matching and data retrieval, and learn how a centralized network can reduce onboarding friction while preserving payer autonomy and PDex semantics.

Our presenters will share critical insights on scalability and how these implementations support broader policy goals around data access, care coordination, and patient empowerment.

Upcoming Da Vinci Community Roundtable on April 29 at 4:00 pm ET

The momentum for healthcare interoperability continues to accelerate. Following the CMS-0057-F final rule, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) have introduced its next major regulatory step: the 2026 Interoperability Standards and Prior Authorization for Drugs Proposed Rule (CMS-0062-P).

Join the HL7 Da Vinci Project for the April Community Roundtable happening on Wednesday, April 29, 2026 at 4 p.m. ET as we break down this new proposal and discuss its implications for HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources® (FHIR®) implementation and the industry at large. The new proposed rule relies heavily on the work of the HL7 Da Vinci Project community and could bring significant changes for industry, including adding Da Vinci implementation guides to Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) requirements.

Featured Speakers

• Denise St. Clair: HL7 Da Vinci Project PMO; Vice President, Health Policy & Interoperability, Global Alliant, Inc.
• Alix Goss: Program Manager, HL7 Da Vinci Project; Senior Consultant, Point-of-Care Partners
• Moderator: Casey Thompson: HL7 Da Vinci Project Program Coordinator; Consultant, Point-of-Care Partners

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