Sending data over the wire is just the start of health care data interoperability. Other critical tasks include identifying the right destination (in other words, a directory), identifying the patient and other security practices, and getting patient consent. In this video, we hear about these topics from two co-chairs of the HL7 FHIR at Scale Taskforce (FAST): Jason Teeple, Senior Director Enterprise Architecture and Interoperability Strategy, Evernorth and Duncan Weatherston, CEO at Smile Digital Health.
Teeple says that up to now, for any two organizations to set up health data exchange, they would require three to five months of looking over the standards they use and setting up a connection. He says this process must be reduced to a few minutes in order for interoperability to become widespread.
HL7 has been partnering with CMS on the FAST project to solve issues of security and patient consent. The FAST committees are broad-based. Weatherston points out that these require strict standards, are therefore coordination among all parties. In addition to the copious implementation guides, reference implementations that are easy to copy and deploy are needed. Teeple talks of needing a “common, reusable, scalable” application.
FAST has four working groups, which interested people are invited to join: security and patient authorization, national directory, interoperable digital identity, and patient consent. Health care professionals must educate security staff, coders, and CEOs about the project.
To make patient identities available to authorized parties, it must be federated: that is, one organization can authenticate a patient through another organization instead of requiring the patient to re-register.
Weatherston says that segmented patient consent (a controversial topic) has to be available; otherwise patients will fear the release of sensitive information and won’t participate.
The system should also make it easy to remove bad actors from networks.
Teeple discussed the roadmap in the video. They plan to create reference implementation along with the implementation guide, and create methods to check conformance. Testing will start in 2026 to support the launch of the CMS regulations in 2027.
Watch the video for more details, include ways to join working groups.
Learn more about EverNorth: https://www.evernorth.com/
Learn more about Smile Digital Health: https://www.smiledigitalhealth.com/
Learn more about HL7 FAST: https://confluence.hl7.org/spaces/FAST/overview
Listen and subscribe to the Healthcare IT Today Interviews Podcast to hear all the latest insights from experts in healthcare IT.
And for an exclusive look at our top stories, subscribe to our newsletter and YouTube.
Tell us what you think. Contact us here or on Twitter at @hcitoday. And if you’re interested in advertising with us, check out our various advertising packages and request our Media Kit.
No comments:
Post a Comment