The CommonWell Health Alliance 2024 Fall Summit, held on November 4-5 in Nashville, brings healthcare and technology leaders together to advance interoperability in health data exchange. The agenda includes sessions on cutting-edge advancements, best practices, and the latest updates in health information exchange. Attendees participate in discussions, networking, and collaborative opportunities with experts from diverse backgrounds, all focused on improving seamless and secure data sharing.
Day 1 kicked off with Jean Ross, RN sharing the importance of Patient Access. Next we dove into a New Wave of Digital Health where we had speakers Sara Sargent (Solace), Rramon Dempers (Invaryant), Rey Villar (Calcium), and Dima Goncharov (Metriport) discussing the importance of trust and challenges that they have each faced in their different organizations as they try to foster seamless data sharing.
After a colorful (and quite tasty) lunch, Liz Lewis of CommonWell took everyone on a deep dive into the Product Roadmap, which perfectly set the stage for our spicy panel discussing all things TEFCA in the HIT Landscape, which included Jill DeGraff (b.well), Therasa Bell (Kno2), Brendan Keeler (HTD Health) and I (Paul L Wilder, CommonWell). We wrapped up the content portion of day 1 with a roundtable on all things Cybersecurity. With an increase in threats, security breaches, and the like, this panel, including Scott Stuewe (DirectTrust), Tom Hanks (DirectTrust), Matthew Webb (HCA Healthcare), and Mark-David McLaughlin (InterSystems) discussed the challenges and ways to try to safeguard your organizations.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the after party, right? We held an attendee reception at Johnny Cash’s Club ONE21 just down the street. Upon the top step to our area, you’re instantly met with stained glass and a fireplace big enough, even Santa could fit down. Stroll past the replica of Johnny & June’s front porch and grab a honey-infused beverage (thanks ELLKAY!) and we all got to relax and mingle in a nothing short of spectacular atmosphere. If you have FOMO, its well placed…
We started day 2 with in-depth overview of the Master Patient Index given by Paul and Mini Sankar (ELLKAY). While we have folks in the audience that are familiar, new capabilities and a deep dive is beneficial for those new-comers and the vets. Next, we broke up the Interop speak a little bit by having Emily Peters (Uncommon Bold) discuss the market trends and introduce CommonWell’s brand refresh. It was evident by the line of questions that this change in topic was welcomed and the advice from a PR expert was appreciated. This set the stage nicely for the next session which was a brief update from each of our Committees: Marketing, Technical, and Policy & Use given by the chairs Ed Donaldson (Milliman Intelliscript), Melissa Massardo (athenahealth), and Marketing Manager, Courtney Baker (CommonWell).
After lunch, we were excited to have Micky Tripathi (ASTP) back as our second day keynote to give us an update on all things from the Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy. Next, we chatted all things Data Quality. As CommonWell has recently joined the Data Usability Working Group as a supporter, we were eager to have Didi Davis (The Sequoia Project) chat with Phil Beckett (C3HIE) and William Gregg (HCA Healthcare) on the incredible importance and impact the quality of data has on interoperability and usability of the data.
A topic that was talked about last year, the CommonWell Marketplace, where it was once just an idea, is now coming to life. We were able to showcase a POC that has taken place. Stephanie Broderick (Clinical Architecture) was able to share more about their product that was used to work with ELLKAY to demonstrate the POC. Megan Schmidt (ELLKAY) and Josh Evensen (ELLKAY) were able to provide the behind the scenes view of how it would work, while I (Paul) was able to share a timeline on next steps on making the Marketplace come to true fruition.
We closed out the Summit with a little FHIR—get it? IAS is a hot topic in the interop space, so we of course, had to chat about it. Liz (CommonWell) chatted with Yelena Balin (b.well) and Josh Evensen (ELLKAY) and Bimal Shah (ELLKAY) to share that we’re in the early stages of testing with b.well (member) and Epic for TEFCA IAS via FHIR. Liz closed with the call to action, “Get your FHIR engines ready-We’re ready for more testing and production pilots starting in Q1 2025–Don’t get left in the dust!”
It was a wild ride in Nashville with insightful discussions, invaluable networking, hats off to the swag this year (pun intended), and truly a great time. We appreciate our Speakers as we could not have done this without them, and to all of our attendees, both in-person and virtually, for engaging with us to make this a year we won’t soon forget (until we start planning next year’s…).
Cheers.