NEW YORK, July 16, 2024 – Firely, a leading FHIR-based technology company, has partnered with Global Alliant to implement HL7 FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) at the CMS Innovation Center, part of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). This collaboration marks a significant step towards improving healthcare data interoperability and advancing patient care for projects such as the Biden Cancer Moonshot initiative.
The CMS Innovation Center, established under the Affordable Care Act, was created to test innovative approaches to enhance patient care while reducing costs. The Center identified the need for a robust solution to support Innovation Models with the ability to report and receive actionable, timely data. This led to the development of the Innovation Support Platform.
Global Alliant, a key development partner for CMS, was brought on to build this platform with a strong focus on creating a solution that didn’t require rebuilding infrastructure for every use case. Denise St. Clair, Director of Health Policy & Interoperability at Global Alliant, highlighted that she had no doubt that FHIR was the key to this platform due to its versatility. St. Clair Said:
“A huge factor was the ability to collect health equity data—specifically, demographic data and social determinants of health—in a number of different settings.”
The first initiative to utilize this innovative infrastructure is the Health Equity Initiative – an Innovation Center-wide initiative that supports the collection of health equity data that represent social needs at a granular level across many different innovation models. Ultimately, this can be used to improve the quality of and access to healthcare services for Americans. All of the data collected ends up in a single FHIR data set. This is where the need for a FHIR server was born.
After extensive research, Firely was selected for its leading FHIR server, Firely Server. “We undertook a huge analysis to determine which was going to be the best option for us, and it really was across many domains that Firely stood out,” St. Clair said.
Firely Server stood out for its robust validation features and excellent performance, critical for managing the diverse and extensive amounts of data handled by CMS. Besides the technical capabilities, St. Clair emphasized the importance of a highly skilled workforce, stating:
“If you need support, you want to reach out to truly knowledgeable people who really understand the standard. When you reach out to Firely, you are going to get expert advice from someone who is willing to roll up their sleeves and really help you work through the issues. That was critical for us. This is the first FHIR implementation for the largest payer in the United States, so we needed to get it right.”
The Health Equity Initiative is now fully operational with Firely Server, and the CMS Innovation Center has been collecting and analyzing data for a full year, leading to significant improvements in data accuracy and processing efficiency.
Building on the success of the Health Equity Initiative, the new FHIR-based infrastructure is set to support multiple models, with the Enhancing Oncology Model (EOM) being the next significant use case. This new project, part of President Biden’s Cancer Moonshot initiative, will further leverage FHIR to collect and analyze cancer-related data, with the aim of improving cancer care outcomes.
St. Clair expressed enthusiasm for the ongoing collaboration: “There has been a lot of attention on EOM, and it couldn’t have happened without Global Alliant’s partnership with Firely. We are excited to continue working with Firely on the great work we’re able to do with FHIR in advancing healthcare innovation.”
About Firely
As one of the initiators of FHIR, Firely provides cutting-edge FHIR solutions that enable healthcare organizations to achieve interoperability and improve patient care. Its ONC-certified FHIR server, Firely Server, ensures CMS compliance and offers market-leading performance and validation capabilities.
About Global Alliant
Global Alliant (GA) is an award-winning information technology consulting and software development company specializing in policy-driven technology solutions for government and healthcare organizations. GA works closely with organizations like CMS to develop and implement innovative solutions that improve patient care and reduce costs.