Final 2022 Annual Report (2) - Flipbook - Page 3
A Message from the Executive Director
Welcome to 2023,
As a follower of the late Dr. Avedis Donabedian, creator of the
Donabedian Model, I am huge believer in structure influencing
process which in turn leads to an outcome. Consequently, I view our
work in health information exchange over the last decade as largely
focused on creating a digital pillar that undergirds the structure
supporting health care.
As the pandemic dwells and we look back, its clear how essential this
type of digital infrastructure has become and why health information
exchanges must naturally evolve into full Health Data Utilities.
Becoming a Health Data Utility will ensure we can service the
growing range of needs to more broadly support better health across
multiple sectors of society.
What is personally exciting to me as we begin 2023, is that we have
finally entered the next phase of our journey to transition from
processing transactions to enabling transformation of health
care processes.
Dr. Tim Pletcher
This means helping organizations not just gain access to the data, but striving to ensure the information can
merge into the workflow process in a manner that is more actionable and enables better decision-making at
the individual, provider, organizational, and population levels. This means bringing greater context to raw
clinical data in ways that highlight the human beneath their medical record and seeking opportunities to
reduce the friction and complexity associated with providing care and social services.
In order to achieve this next phase, we must continue to ride the interoperability roller coaster. We will be
supporting a new generation of standards and adopting a new set of emerging technologies that coincide with
recent regulatory requirements to enable process transformation and empower consumer access and use of
data. This means that application programming interfaces (API’s) that utilize HL7 FHIR®, advanced cloud native
computing platforms, novel technology like Clinical Decision Systems Hooks (CDS Hooks) and the Clinical
Quality Language (CQL), and the ready integration of Smart on FHIR applications are all required components
of our new integrated technology environment being installed and configured for use this calendar year as
we phase out our legacy applications.
Because deep understanding and skillsets to support HL7 FHIR are relatively nascent, we plan to double down
on our partnerships with participants, key partners, and stakeholders to learn how best as a community to
adopt and harness these new capabilities. This includes pursuit of demonstration projects to establish value
and expanding our efforts to train a new high-caliber, innovative, and diverse HIT workforce though our
internship and apprenticeship programs.
Our commitment to HIT workforce development remains high because despite great strides to digitize the
structure, and efforts to transform the processes around health care, it’s going to be this new generation of
people who believe in our mission, believe in the power of our work, and come to work every day committed to
making valuable change who will ensure we usher in the real transformation of achieving better, more
equitable health outcomes!
-Tim Pletcher, DHA
PAGE 3
