HL7 has been working to advance FHIR - Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources Platform standard since 2012. In 2014 healthcare industry players started to band together in the Argonaut project which was the first implementation community comprising leading technology vendors and provider organizations stakeholders. Since that time, several consortiums of health industry leaders have rallied around various health IT initiatives such as health payer initiatives, puplic health and health equity, infrastructure, and research initiatives. There are now eight FHIR accelerators who have published implementation guides that provide important documentation on how technology builders should use the FHIR resources within their systems to advance data sharing. These implementation guides have become the foundation for use of the standard as prescribed in Interoperability rules set forth by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT.

Now that so many implementation guides are near complete, the HL7 organization has added three new executive positions to support standards implementation in the new HL7 Implementation Division. So today we will talk to the spearheads of the Implementation Division to better understand how this expanded focus will impact the business of healthcare.

Dr. Charles Jaffe is the CEO of HL7. He completed his medical training at Johns Hopkins and Duke Universities and post-doctoral training at NIH and the Lombardi Cancer Center. He served in various academic positions in the Departments of Medicine and in the School of Engineering and has worked in healthcare technology for more than 30 years.. Dr. Jaffe has led the charge at HL7 since 2007.

Viet Nguyen, MD, will head the standards implementation division as chief standards implementation officer alongside Diego Kaminker who will fill the role of deputy chief standards implementation officer.

Viet is an internist, pediatrician, and clinical informaticist who has held leadership roles such as chief medical officer and chief medical information officer at Leidos Corporation, Lockheed-Martin, and Systems Made Simple.

HL7 selected Kaminker as the deputy chief standards implementation officer. He is the founder and owner of Kern IT with specialties in integration, software development, and project management.

Kaminker has been a member of the HL7 community for twenty years and has served multiple terms as the chair of HL7 Argentina as well as an affiliate director of the HL7 International board of directors. Throughout his career, Kaminker has defined, implemented, and maintained hundreds of HL7 interoperability projects.

On this episode of the podcast this powerhouse leadership team talks about their strategies for engaging more healthcare stakeholders in the implementation process to better inform those building the specification.