The Standard

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."

Anthem, Cedars-Sinai, and CareEvolution to share on project to implement Data Exchange for Quality Measures and Event Notification on Wednesday, October 28

Like peeling back the layers of an onion, exchanging information to support value-based care involves complex data challenges for providers and payers alike.

That’s particularly true when it comes to navigating essential communications between providers and payers, using that dialogue to better coordinate care and achieve the best possible results for patients.

Two key areas that challenge everyone is ensuring that quality measures are met and that everyone in the chain is on the same page when it comes to events. Typically, these are hard for all parties in sharing relevant information.

HL7’s Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR®) standard offers an approach that everyone can use to facilitate data exchanges. In an upcoming community roundtable scheduled for 4 to 5:30 p.m. ET on Wednesday, October 28, HL7 Da Vinci Project members Anthem, Cedars-Sinai and CareEvolution will discuss their efforts to put implementation guides for Data Exchange for Quality Measures and Event Notification in place.

Next week, developers working with health data are gathering at the FHIR Dev Days conference, June 15-18, 2020, and Microsoft is pleased to host the “Hack on FHIR.”  Get coding time, explore the FHIR spec, and learn the platforms helping organizations innovate using technology that removes barriers to interoperability.

In the world of technology, new inventions and ideas are introduced daily. It’s become common to brand a new technology platform as one that will “revolutionize” or “transform" the world as we know it.  But in most cases, the true test of new technology is far more than slogans or hype, it’s how that tech stands up in a crisis or an emergency.  

Three use cases will be in the spotlight as the HL7 Da Vinci Project hosts its regular monthly community roundtable from 4:00 to 5:30 p.m. ET on Wednesday, May 27.

The session will demonstrate how organizations are using the Da Vinci Project implementation guides to streamline the exchange of information between payers and providers.

The event, “Learn How Cambia Health Solutions, HealthSparq and United are Using Da Vinci Specifications to Advance Value-Based Care,” will look at ways that HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR®) can be used to achieve quality measurement, provider search and lab results integration into EMRs.

Due to COVID-19, most of the in-person conferences have been changed to virtual events. I recently attended my first-ever fully online technology conference, the Virtual HL7 FHIR Connectathon. This article details my experience and recommendations, in general, for all future conferences post-COVID-19.

Introduction

First, let me give my kudos to HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) Product Director Grahame Grieve, the planning team, track leads, FHIR community and HL7 for the  excellent execution of  the Virtual FHIR Connectathon. The conference includes healthcare data interoperability topics with different tracks, expertise and both technical non-technical skills.

I have attended many in-person conferences in the past. Over time, I realized people attend conferences for primarily for two reasons:

1. Learning new skills
2. Networking

Let me share my thoughts based on my first Virtual FHIR Connectathon experience.

Recap of the April HL7 Da Vinci Project Community Roundtable