The Standard

WHY STANDARDS?

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

WASHINGTON – Today a group of technology leaders from Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and Salesforce came together at the CMS Blue Button 2.0 Developer Conference to reaffirm a commitment to interoperability made one year ago, and to share progress and plans to move decisively forward on this pledge.

We are delighted to announce that HL7 has received a letter of support applauding our work in standards development from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Seema Verma.

Based on the impact that HL7 has made on improving interoperability and current adoption of the HL7® FHIR® standard, CMS has shared their priorities for collaboration in the coming year. 

HL7 will be developing a strategy over the next several weeks, with input from CMS, to meet each of these priorities. I will share more information about this in the near future. In the meantime, I'd like to thank you for your contributions to the work of this organization and ask you to join me as we focus our efforts on meeting these needs.
 

To view the letter in its entirety, please click here.

Sincerely,


HL7 International CEO 
Charles Jaffe, MD, PhD

Document defines precision medicine use cases, supporting underlying
foundations for genomics in FHIR

This week, we published the HL7 Domain Analysis Model: Clinical Genomics after a rigorous ISO/ANSI-compatible balloting process. The document is part of an ongoing effort by the HL7 Clinical Genomics Work Group to identify common workflows and use cases to facilitate scalable and interoperable data standards for the breadth of clinical genomics scenarios. The Domain Analysis Model (DAM) is becoming a widely used reference for clinical genomics, covering a myriad of use cases, including emerging ones such as preimplantation genetic diagnosis, whole exome sequencing, RNA-sequencing and proteomics.

As the global authority for interoperability in health care information technology with affiliates in 35 countries, we're excited to announce the publication of Release 4 of the HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR^®) standard. This new version is the culmination of 18 months of extensive work to finalize the base parts of the specification and incorporates changes and enhancement requests received from implementation partners around the world.

"HL7 FHIR R4 is a beginning," said HL7 CEO Dr. Charles Jaffe. "It is the legacy of eight years of innovation and collaboration among a community of thousands around the world. It is a commitment from HL7 to create a platform from which Interoperability can someday emerge. It is a promise to provide reusable data across the continuum of biomedical research, patient care, and population health."

 
Achieving healthcare interoperability at any level, by definition, requires at least two parties working together. Achieving it on a global scale requires a shared dedication of the many to the common good.  Consider the vision statements of two organizations:

• HL7 International: “A world in which everyone can securely access and use the right health data when and where they need it.”
• IHE International: “Enable seamless and secure access to health information that is usable whenever and wherever needed.”

A Little About HL7

HL7^® FHIR^® DevDays Comes to the U.S.