CMS Connectathons
2023 CMS HL7® FHIR® Connectathon
July 18-20, 2023
9:00 AM to 5:00 PM US EDT
A Virtual Testing Event: Participate, Contribute and Learn!
Facilitated by the Office of Burden Reduction and Health Informatics (OBRHI)
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and Health Level Seven (HL7) International are proud to again bring stakeholders together for the HL7 FHIR Connectathon this July.
- July 18: CMS and industry experts will provide policy updates with emphasis on future interoperability strategies.
- July 19: Implementers will conduct testing with Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) servers and Implementation Guides (IGs) with application developers who are working to support better patient access, health equity and data access for the healthcare industry.
- July 20: Observers will explore the work of the HL7 FHIR Community as more than a dozen different FHIR Connectathon track teams show how they have advanced APIs to meet important use cases.
Ways to Participate
- Test your server or application
- Participate in implementer roundtables
- Federal employees: observe and learn
Event Overview
The adoption of HL7 FHIR is rapidly accelerating due to recognition of its benefits in reducing clinician burden, improving the exchange of quality measure data and enabling real-time patient, provider and payer data access. FHIR also provides a path to meet the federal interoperability and patient access rules.
The goals for this event are to:
- Educate interested parties at CMS and within the health IT community about HL7 FHIR, FHIR implementation guides (IGs) developed by the Da Vinci Project and the CARIN Alliance and their real-world uses.
- Support impacted stakeholders as they comply with the CMS and ONC interoperability rules.
- Engage providers, payers, and partners to join the growing collaborative FHIR community and directly access associated free and open resources.
Follow the CMS HL7 FHIR Connectathon Confluence Page for event details.
Who should join?
Do you consider yourself FHIR naïve? This event will give you a basic FHIR and implementation guide (IG) education which will advance your expertise and allow you to kickstart your FHIR development activities and understanding!
Are you working with FHIR but not yet implementing IGs? You will better understand the relationship of the IGs to the federal rule requirements and learn from early adopters!
Are you already implementing the guides? Come and test out your implementation with others!
What are Connectathons?
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 usability for solving healthcare data exchange challenges.
Connectathons are an important part of the HL7 standards development process to advance adoption. These events ensure that each specification meets the needs of a diverse set of stakeholders as system developers prepare for implementation and the standard moves through the ballot process.
CMS is inviting healthcare system developers, business owners, and vendors from across the country to participate in certain tracks that focus on clinical and business use cases. CMS employees will have immediate access to national subject matter experts, to watch the standard work in real time, and to meet with FHIR coders.
Interoperability and Patient Access Final Rule
In the May 2020 Interoperability and Patient Access final rule (CMS-9115-F), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) suggested the use of certain HL7 FHIR specifications to support application programming interfaces (APIs).
The agency is showing its support of these standards by hosting a third Connectathon, to ensure adequate testing which will advance the standards for the broad range of healthcare exchange scenarios. Many of these use cases are on the critical path to meeting the requirements of the May 2020 interoperability rules from both CMS and the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC).
How Do I Register?
Register Online
Online registration closes June 30, 2023.
Advance Registration/Payment
There is no cost for this event.
Cancellation/Refund Policy
For more information, please contact HL7's Education Marketing Manager, Melinda Stewart.
Additional Information
The CMS Connecathon has several tracks to learn about Use Cases. They include:
- CARIN IG for Blue Button®
- CARIN IG for Digital Insurance Card
- Clinical Quality Improvement
- CMS BCDA, AB2D and DPC Introduction and Workshop
- Da Vinci Burden Reduction (BR)
- Da Vinci CDex: Attachments,Task-Based, and Direct Queries Between Payers and Providers
- Da Vinci Patient Cost Transparency
- Da Vinci Payer Data Exchange (PDex) and Formulary
- FAST Infrastructure (Security & Identity)
- FAST National Directory of Healthcare & Da Vinci Plan Net
- Gravity Social Determinants of Health (SDOH)
- PACIO Advance Directive Interoperability
- PACIO Personal Functioning and Engagement Integration
- Physical Activity
*See more information on the Confluence page.