Interoperability regains the spotlight with new Big Tech industry pledge

In recent years, “interoperability” has relinquished its crown as health IT’s most popular buzzword, decisively replaced by “artificial intelligence” in the court of clickbait contenders.  

That doesn’t mean it has been any less important to making sure that the digital health ecosystem functions the way it’s supposed to: after all, without true interoperability across clinical, administrative, and financial datasets, artificial intelligence models won’t have the fuel they need to offer meaningful insights to users.  

In recognition of the vital role high-quality data must play in the next generation of digital health maturity, industry leaders and White House officials have come together to renew their vows around creating an environment where data flows freely, especially to the patients who deserve full access to their own medical records to support personal decision-making. 

In an event predictably branded “Make Health Tech Great Again,” leaders from HHS and CMS welcomed executives from some of the biggest names in digital health and AI, including Amazon, Anthropic, Apple, Google, and OpenAI, to unveil voluntary interoperability criteria that build upon more than a decade of foundational work completed across both Democratic and Republican administrations.  

“For too long, patients in this country have been burdened with a healthcare system that has not kept pace with the disruptive innovations that have transformed nearly every other sector of our economy,” said CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz.    

A flurry of pledges to continue the good fight toward interoperable data

In addition to the headlining companies, more than 60 other industry partners have signed a non-binding pledge to work collaboratively on solving lingering challenges in interoperability.

Twenty-one data networks pledged to meet the revamped CMS Interoperability Framework criteria to become CMS Aligned Networks, which will self-attest to implementation of the framework as they work to connect disparate systems under their purview.  

At the same time, a dozen organizations, including Google, Apple, CVS, and UnitedHealth, signed up to “kill the clipboard” by supporting the work of these aligned networks, affirming their commitment with the following: 

We pledge to empower patients to retrieve their health records from CMS Aligned Networks or personal health record apps and share them with providers via QR codes or Smart Health Cards/Links using FHIR bundles. When possible, we will return visit records to patients in the same format. We commit to seamless, secure data exchange—eliminating the need for patients to repeatedly recall and write out their medical history. We are committed to “kill the clipboard,” one encounter at a time.  

Last but not least, around 30 companies will focus on promoting “real health outcomes” by leveraging CMS Aligned Networks to share data for apps that provide direct services to beneficiaries, such as diabetes and obesity management tools, conversational AI assistants, and personalized advice and health system navigation.  These companies include Microsoft AI, ZocDoc, and NantHealth, as well as telehealth and wellness developers such as Oura Health and Noom.  

“With the commitments made by these entrepreneurial companies today, we stand ready for a paradigm shift in the US healthcare system for the benefit of patients and providers,” Oz continued.  

 An interoperability progress report from CMS

CMS also provided some updates on ongoing projects to improve seamless data sharing.  

• CMS will update the Plan Finder that helps Medicare beneficiaries select the right coverage options for their needs. The new tool will make it easier for beneficiaries to select plans that have their preferred providers and health systems in-network. 

• A new National Provider Directory is in the works, built on FHIR API standards to enabe apps to find provider networks. New functionalities will be launching later this year. 

• Blue Button, one of the original interoperability efforts from way back in the days of meaningful use, is also getting some attention in the form of infrastructure updates to make claims data retrieval faster and more accessible. 

The latest in a long line of incrementally successful interoperability efforts

 Interoperability has been a primary focus for the healthcare industry since the Affordable Care Act launched the great wave of EHR adoption in the early 2010s. It has also been one of the rare instances of a truly bipartisan effort, sustained across all recent administrations in some form or another. 

While the Obama White House zeroed in on building the foundational pipelines and policies to make basic interoperability possible in the earliest days of digital development, the first Trump administration focused strongly on patient access to personal health data, which requires a breakdown of technical siloes and competing business incentives that limited broad data sharing. 

Industry leaders, too, have been relatively steadfast in their support across blue and red White Houses, with multiple rounds of very similar pledges punctuating the news cycle every few years. 

2017, 2019, 2023, and now 2025 have all had their splashy press events with their flurries of news releases touting the imminent destruction of all barriers to interoperability – and while each of these surges has indeed brought meaningful and much-needed changes to the legacy environment, none have yet succeeded in completely reinventing the data sharing landscape. 

That will continue to take time, new policy approaches, and sustained commitment from government entities and the private sector. 

It’s nice to see that the momentum is still going strong and that the industry still recognizes the vital role of interoperability in some of its most critical tasks, even after many, many years of slowly gnawing away at the same problems. Hopefully, this latest effort will keep pushing progress forward and help the industry reach its next milestones on the long journey toward freeing up data for providers and patients. 

Jennifer Bresnick is a journalist and freelance content creator with a decade of experience in the health IT industry.  Her work has focused on leveraging innovative technology tools to create value, improve health equity, and achieve the promises of the learning health system.  She can be reached at [email protected].