**White House Collaborates with Tech Leaders for Digital Health Initiative**
Today, the White House revealed a major partnership with more than 60 tech and healthcare entities, including prominent firms such as Apple, Google, OpenAI, and Amazon. This initiative intends to improve the functioning of patient data and digital health resources throughout the United States, with an emphasis on developing a more secure and personalized healthcare experience.
As stated by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the initiative will focus on two key goals:
1. **Advancing a CMS Interoperability Framework**: This framework is aimed at enabling effortless information exchange between patients and healthcare providers.
2. **Enhancing Access to Personalized Tools**: The objective is to supply patients with the essential information and tools to make well-informed health decisions.
The main goal of this initiative is to empower patients by transferring control and access of health data to them, thereby simplifying the utilization of this data across multiple healthcare providers and applications.
The initiative is led by the CMS, the Office for Civil Rights, and the Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy.
### Apple’s Involvement: “Eliminating the Clipboard”
A critical aspect of the project is the recently published CMS Interoperability Framework, which outlines technical standards for data sharing among apps, Electronic Health Records (EHRs), and networks. More than 60 companies have committed to creating tools and services that align with this framework, with 30 of these companies focusing on new consumer applications.
These applications are anticipated to launch in the upcoming months and will offer access to a variety of health management resources, including:
– Solutions for managing diabetes and obesity.
– Conversational AI assistants to assist patients in checking symptoms, exploring care options, and scheduling appointments.
– Digital check-in processes to replace conventional paper intake forms, effectively “eliminating the clipboard.”
Apple is partnering with several other organizations, including b.well, Connected Health, Citizen Health, CVS Health, Fasten Health, Flexpa, Google, NantHealth, Samsung, Sharecare, UnitedHealth Group, and Zocdoc, on the “eliminate the clipboard” initiative.
The participating companies have committed to empowering patients to access their health records from CMS-aligned networks or personal health record applications and to share this information with providers via QR codes or Smart Health Cards/Links through FHIR bundles. They promise to guarantee seamless and secure data exchange, removing the necessity for patients to repeatedly remember and document their medical history.
For additional details about the participating companies and the CMS Interoperability Framework, visit the
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