Beyond Boundaries Day 1 Takeaways

Information Blocking: The glass is either half empty or half full with regard to interop progress, depending upon where you stand to benefit.  Best data is two + years old, hard to understand if it is even relevant.  Progress is happening, best presentation showed the upward trends.  We need more/better data with real-time measures.  John Everson has the best presentation and backup for his assertions about progress.

Vocabulary (Semantics): If it isn't critical to care provided it is not as important.  Most of our discusssion was around SNOMED CT, LOINC and RxNorm (aka SOLOR).  ICD? CPT? Not necessarily relevant to clinical care.  VSAC is good.

Interoperability Networks and Infrastructure: I find it telling that among 6 of the 8 "nationwide networks" participating in the discussion, half of them are making progress on connecting to each other (Carequality, Commonwell and Surescripts) and are working towards the one network/multiple carriers model and the others are not quite there yet.

APIs: Perhaps the most boring and exciting panel yet, in that everyone is agreed that SMART on FHIR is the way to go.  Focus beyond that is in part where some would focus attention differently.  Essential the battle about the standard is over, the contest seems to be about who might pick up the implementation guide honorary mention, and the front runner (Argonaut Project) wasn't even on the panel... (Though Micky was the moderator of the next one).  FWIW, SMART is out for ballot on the standards track in HL7 this cycle

Third Party Uses: Standards we know (IHE, HL7 V2, V3, FHIR) = Cool, FHIR = Very Cool.  We R doing kewl stuff.  Noted complete absence of X12N from the discussion, even in payer channels where that might be natural to consider.

Some final notes: Tomorrow I am on the starting panel: Fit for purpose, and then we will hear from dietarty/nutritional, LTC, and Behavioral Health providors in a session titled "Across the Continuum", with wrap up from a panel moderated by John Halamka, and including Clem McDonald, Walter Sujansky and Aneesh Chopra.  I didn't see either John or Aneesh today, but both Clem and Walter made their presence known today.