The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has asked Dr. Rasu Shrestha of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center to lead its VA Open Application Programming Interface pledge, an initiative that aims to drive interoperability for electronic health records.
Announced at the recent annual Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) meeting in Las Vegas, the API pledge encourages healthcare providers to commit to working collaboratively with the VA to increase the pace of mapping health data to industry standards -- including current and future versions of the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) data exchange standard, according to the VA. So far, 11 providers have signed on to partner with the VA, with several additional institutions expressing interest in joining the pledge, the VA said.
The VA is also asking software developers to participate in its Lighthouse Lab beta test; Lighthouse is the VA's API management platform.
"There is no moment greater than now for the industry to step up and make their voices heard to push toward real and meaningful interoperability," Shrestha said in a statement. "This is an important moment for the private sector to answer [VA Secretary David Shulkin's] call and work with our vendors to make information flow and use as freely accessible as possible to make care safer and better for veterans."
VA API pledgees will meet in April for a roundtable discussion and then commit to working with the VA and the data standards community to implement the existing FHIR Argonaut implementation guides. Next, the organizations will be involved in testing draft specifications for scheduling, clinical notes, questionnaires, and encounters, as well as implementing access standards for veterans, clinicians, and care teams, according to the VA.
