ANN ARBOR, Mich., Aug. 02, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Interoperability Institute (IOI) joined more than 100 developers, programmers, technology experts, analysts, and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) colleagues to learn about emerging APIs and HL7® FHIR® implementation by participating in the 2021 Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) HL7 FHIR Connectathon.
An HL7 FHIR Connectathon is a collaborative event in which technical and business stakeholders from across the healthcare industry convene to test HL7 FHIR Implementation Guides and Reference Implementations to demonstrate their use for solving healthcare interoperability challenges.
The focus of the event was to:
- Educate interested parties at CMS and within the health IT community about HL7 FHIR, FHIR implementation guides (IGs) and their real-world uses.
- Support impacted stakeholders as they comply with the CMS and ONC interoperability rules.
- Engage providers, payers, and other health sector partners to join the growing collaborative FHIR community and directly access associated free and open resources.
“Advancing FHIR standards is a key component of moving the healthcare industry towards true interoperability,” said Mary Kratz, Executive Vice President of Interoperability Institute. “Connectathons are an integral part of the standards development process to advance adoption. We’re proud to have participated in the CMS event.”
IOI participated in six different tracks during the Connectathon by providing standards driven interfaces for the common components found in modern healthcare systems, furthering its mission to serve as a technology incubator for the advancement of global and interoperable health solutions.
IOI used MELD, the open-source sandbox offering from InterOp.Community, to perform robust testing of HL7 FHIR resources. MELD is a virtual environment that allows collaborators to design, test and prototype software. This cloud native platform allows innovation using all the tools of an enterprise environment with none of the overhead.
In addition to MELD, IOI also provides a private sandbox called Interoperability Land™, a fee-for-service ‘locker’ sandbox offering available on the AWS Marketplace. A private sandbox enables organizations the ability to leverage public domain community assets and quickly – same day - stand up a private sandbox environment. This business model offers the best of both worlds: a publicly available open-source sandbox that provides the wisdom of the community, plus locker sandboxes for private business activities.
“We believe that MELD will accelerate the delivery of innovative healthcare applications that will, ultimately, improve health and healthcare,” said Tim Pletcher, DHA, Chief Executive Officer of Interoperability Institute. “MELD is more than just a sandbox. It’s a critical piece of technology, built for global healthcare innovators to converge and solve some of the toughest challenges facing providers, payers, and patients. This shared digital space will allow for advanced interoperability testing and development across different organizations and systems.”
IOI plans to showcase the offering at industry events, standards organizations and with academic partners, where individuals can gather and efficiently test applications and interoperability solutions.
Click here to access MELD. For additional information or to learn more about the sandbox, contact help@interoperabilityinstitute.org.
###
About Interoperability Institute
Interoperability Institute focuses on creating communities and environments that accelerate the adoption of interoperability in ways that result in greater health and more impactful delivery of human services through developing solutions and the next generation workforce to enable organizations and communities to harness the benefits of interoperability at scale. The Institute is as a limited liability company with the Michigan Health Information Network Shared Services (MiHIN) as the sole member. For more information, visit https://interoperabilityinstitute.org/.
Attachment
