Firstly of 2026, HL7 appointed Rachel Dunscombe as its new CEO, succeeding Charles Jaffe, M.D., Ph.D., who led the interoperability group for almost twenty years. On Might 12, Dunscombe delivered the keynote tackle to the WEDI spring convention, describing how HL7’s work was aligning with fast-moving coverage adjustments in Washington, D.C.
Earlier than becoming a member of HL7, Dunscombe served as CEO of openEHR Worldwide, the place she led world adoption of open well being information requirements and strengthened partnerships with governments, requirements our bodies, and healthcare organizations worldwide. OpenEHR is a nonprofit group that publishes technical requirements for an EHR platform, together with area‑developed scientific fashions to outline content material. She’s additionally held positions throughout the UK well being and expertise panorama, together with main the NHS Digital Academy, serving as an advisor to the UK Secretary of Well being and contributing to nationwide coverage by way of the UK Authorities AI Council. As well as, she holds a visiting professorship at Imperial Faculty of London and serves as on the board of administrators for the Digital Well being Society.
Dunscombe stated the work of HL7 goes past creating specs. “It’s about what occurs once we’ve created the specification and we have to scale into interoperability. We are able to write requirements, we are able to make them usable and constant, however how can we use them to scale back burden and enhance outcomes? That’s what I am actually considering.”
The FHIR accelerators comparable to Gravity Mission, Codex, Vulcan, Helios and others, are how HL7 makes that leap from requirements to real-world implementation.
Dunscombe talked about a number of initiatives from CMS and ONC. “We have CMS-0057-F, which has created concrete implementation deadlines. We have prior auth, which is turning into the check case,” she stated. “We’ve received AI and automation, that are elevating these expectations, and now requirements should show the operational functionality. That is the place the entire work that we’re doing issues.”
She stated that in prior authorization, transparency is a recreation changer. “It actually does pace up the prior authorization and that, in flip, improves healthcare pathways. It improves clinicians expertise. It ensures the time to therapy is shorter, and we’re doing that by way of the FHIR-based APIs.”
Dunscombe stated that in prior authorization, we should be very particular in regards to the causes for denials. “Permitting that to be executed by way of these applied sciences will actually make issues an terrible lot clearer. We want public prior authorization metrics so we are able to see what the efficiency is.”
CMS-0057-F, as a rule, Dunscombe stated, is about enhancing well being data change and entry to well being data for sufferers, payers and suppliers. “We have to make sure that all of these are concerned, and that’s very a lot what our ethos is for the long run. The long run work is supporting that scaled adoption, and there are a selection of issues that we’re doing at HL7 to make sure that we are able to assist that.”
One, she added, is about decreasing implementation variability. “We’re very a lot aligning with CMS and ASTP on their priorities. We’re making requirements simpler to undertake. We’re actually working arduous at enabling folks to undertake them within the lowest-friction method,” she stated.
Dunscombe stated HL7 is supporting AI and automation security. “We’re aligning our requirements, making them machine-readable in order that they can be utilized by each people and by the expertise,” she defined. “We’re decreasing burden for suppliers and distributors. The entire focus that we have got for the time being on issues like prior auth is about taking that friction out of the healthcare system. We’re measuring affect, not simply compliance, so we’re the advantages of what we’re really delivering. We have to have the ability to check issues and ensure that they’re prepared for deployment and real-world use.”
Coinciding with Dunscombe’s speak at WEDI, HL7 introduced it has been designated a “Buddy of the Ecosystem” inside the CMS Well being Tech Ecosystem. This designation acknowledges HL7’s important position in supporting CMS’s Kill the Clipboard initiative and the broader Well being Expertise Ecosystem challenge, each of which purpose to scale back administrative burden and enhance information entry throughout the U.S. healthcare system.
The CMS Well being Tech Ecosystem is designed to speed up the adoption of recent, requirements‑based mostly applied sciences that enable sufferers, clinicians, and well being methods to change data seamlessly. The initiative focuses on changing handbook, paper‑based mostly, and duplicative processes with interoperable digital options that make well being information simpler to entry, share, and use.
“Our market-driven, consensus-based strategy to growing open requirements has constructed the muse the AI period will run on,” stated Daniel Vreeman, D.P.T., HL7’s chief requirements improvement officer, in an announcement. “Initiatives just like the CMS Well being Expertise Ecosystem create the alignment to catalyze breakthrough capabilities for sufferers, clinicians, and innovators throughout the ecosystem.”
