HL7’s FHIR Foundry Speeds Up Health Data Standards Adoption

HL7’s FHIR Foundry platform is enabling health organizations to test references of the modern health information exchange specifications before implementation, reducing adoption burden as federal agencies push for the use of Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) APIs to enhance interoperability.

“Once you’ve selected your project, … you can use a client reference implementation to illustrate how the implementation guide is used in real life,” said Diego Kaminker, deputy chief standards implementation officer, at HIMSS 2025 in Las Vegas, Nevada, Tuesday.

HL7 designed Foundry to support the implementation and adoption of FHIR standards. It serves as an open ecosystem where developers, health care organizations and technology vendors can discover, test and implement FHIR-based solutions to improve interoperability in their health care ecosystems.

“Anything that you put in the way of an adopter … it’s all just obstacles. It’s noise, it’s getting in the way. … This idea of Foundry … is helping implementers get started to reduce that learning curve or the difficulties of actually implementing things in practice,” said Preston Lee, CTO of the nonprofit Logica Health and visionary behind the HL7 Foundry infrastructure, during a panel demonstrating the solution. “Then once you wrap your head around the way things work, you can start disabling this component, inserting yours … from your own organization.”

Since its launch in mid-2024, the platform has grown to host 86 products that developers have published, providing a robust environment for continuous testing and real-world application of interoperability standards.

CMS Pushes for FHIR APIs

Federal agencies continue to push for adoption of HL7 FHIR APIs to enhance health care interoperability, reduce administrative burden and improve patient access to data. The goal is to create a seamless exchange of electronic health information (EHI) between health care providers, payers and patients.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) finalized its Interoperability and Prior Authorization Final Rule (CMS-0057-F) in January 2024. The rule introduced new requirements to improve electronic health information exchange, including requiring payers to implement a HL7 FHIR Prior Authorization API to drive efficiency in electronic prior authorization between providers and payers by automating it.

By mandating HL7 FHIR APIs, CMS aims to enhance interoperability across health care systems and are expected to save approximately $15 billion over the next decade.

“Increasing efficiency and enabling health care data to flow freely and securely between patients, providers, and payers and streamlining prior authorization processes supports better health outcomes and a better health care experience for all,” said former CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure in an earlier press release about the rule.

ASTP’s TEFCA Supports FHIR API Exchange

The Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy released the second version of the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA) in mid-2024. That framework supports more interoperability measures for health care systems, including Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) application programming interfaces (APIs).

“We have long intended for TEFCA to have the capacity to enable FHIR API exchange. This is in direct response to the health IT industry’s move toward standardized APIs with modern privacy and security safeguards and allows TEFCA to keep pace with the advanced, secure data services approaches used by the tech industry,” said Micky Tripathi, former Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy and National Coordinator for Health IT, in a release announcing the Common Agreement update.

Before leaving his post at the Department of Health and Human Services during the presidential transition, Tripathi sat down with GovCIO Media & Research to explain his outlook on the future health landscape.

“The electronic health record systems we require to use FHIR APIs are also now being adopted by health insurers for claims data. Our goal is for patients to experience the same ease in health care that they do when tracking a pizza order — knowing where their care is at every step,” Tripathi said in his exit interview.