What You Should Know:
– The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) today announced significant progress towards building a smarter, more secure, and more personalized healthcare experience, driven by a new partnership with innovative private sector companies.
– During a White House “Make Health Tech Great Again” event hosted with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the Administration secured commitments from major healthcare and information technology firms—including Amazon, Anthropic, Apple, Google, and OpenAI—to lay the foundation for a next-generation digital health ecosystem. The initiative aims to improve patient outcomes, reduce provider burden, and drive value.
Two Pillars of the Digital Health Ecosystem
The Administration’s efforts focus on two broad areas:
- Promoting a CMS Interoperability Framework: This framework aims to enable easy and seamless information sharing between patients and providers.
- Increasing Personalized Tools: This involves making more personalized tools available, ensuring patients have the information and resources needed to make better health decisions.
At the White House event, CMS unveiled voluntary criteria for trusted, patient-centered, and practical data exchange, accessible for all network types, including health information networks and exchanges, Electronic Health Records (EHRs), and tech platforms.
“For decades, bureaucrats and entrenched interests buried health data and blocked patients from taking control of their health,” said HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. “That ends today. We’re tearing down digital walls, returning power to patients, and rebuilding a health system that serves the people. This is how we begin to Make America Healthy Again.”
Industry Commits to Accelerate Digital Health
More than 60 companies pledged to work collaboratively to deliver results for the American people in the first quarter of 2026. Key commitments include:
- CMS Aligned Networks: Twenty-one networks pledged to meet the CMS Interoperability Framework criteria to become CMS Aligned Networks.
- Provider Participation: Eleven health systems or providers committed to participate and support patient use.
- EHR Data Exchange: Seven EHRs committed to facilitate data exchange and help “kill the clipboard”.
In addition, 30 companies pledged to promote real health outcomes with technology in the coming months. These new tools will use secure digital identity credentials to obtain medical records from CMS Aligned Networks that meet CMS data sharing criteria. The apps will assist in delivering key services to beneficiaries, such as:
- Diabetes and obesity management.
- Use of conversational AI assistants to help patients check symptoms, navigate care options, and schedule appointments.
- Tools to “kill the clipboard” by replacing paper intake forms with seamless digital check-in methods.
Here is a full list of companies supporting CMS’ Health Tech Ecosystem initiative by area:
Data Networks Company Pledges
athenahealth
b.well Connected Health
Carequality
CommonWell Health Alliance
CRISP
CyncHealth
Datavant
eClinicalWorks
eHealth Exchange
Epic
Health Gorilla
Innovaccer
Kno2
KONZA Health
Louisiana Department of Health
MedAllies
MyHealth Access Network
Oracle Health
Particle Health
Surescripts
Zus Health
Health Systems & Provider Company Pledges
Amazon
AtlantiCare
Bon Secours Mercy Health
Cleveland Clinic
CVS Health
Froedtert ThedaCare Health Inc.
Intermountain Health
Providence
Sanford Health
Tennessee Oncology
UnitedHealth Group
Patient Facing Apps — Conversational AI Assistants
Anthropic
Brado
Citizen Health
Curai Health
Ellipsis Health
Hippocratic AI
K Health
Microsoft AI
NantHealth
NightingaleMD
Nuna
OpenAI
Oura
Polygon Health
Sharecare
UnitedHealth Group
Zocdoc
Patient Facing Apps — Diabetes and Obesity
Albertsons Companies
Bioinsights
HabitNu
Noom
Nuna
Oura
Virta Health
Welldoc
Patient Facing Apps — Kill the Clipboard Company Pledges
Apple
b.well Connected Health
Citizen Health
CVS Health
Fasten Health
Flexpa
NantHealth
Samsung
Sharecare
UnitedHealth Group
Zocdoc
Payers Company Pledge
Aetna, A CVS Health Company
Elevance Health
Humana
Medicare (CMS)
UnitedHealth Group
CMS Update on Foundational Efforts
CMS also provided an update on foundational efforts supporting a new digital health ecosystem and enhancing the beneficiary experience:
- Enhanced Plan Finder: CMS will update its Plan Finder tool on Medicare.gov to help beneficiaries select plans with preferred providers and hospitals in-network, ensuring privacy and HIPAA compliance.
- National Provider Directory: CMS has begun building a Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR)-based Application Programming Interface (API) to enable apps to find provider networks and endpoints, while improving data quality and mapping complex provider hierarchies. Initial functionality will launch later this year.
- Modern Identity for Medicare.gov: CMS is working to add modern digital identity to Medicare.gov this year, enhancing security without disrupting current user accounts.
- Faster Blue Button Data: CMS is developing infrastructure to reduce the time between claims receipt and accessibility via Blue Button, accelerating data availability for patients and developers. FHIR-based digital insurance cards will also be available this year.
- Data at the Point of Care (DPC): CMS is integrating digital identity and National Provider Directory validation into DPC’s continued development.
- Trusted Exchange & CMS-Aligned Networks: CMS announced the new CMS-Aligned Networks concept based on the CMS Interoperability Framework. CMS plans to participate in trusted data exchange, responding to patient/provider queries and sharing Blue Button claims data through these networks as early as Q1 2026. This aims to allow patients to securely access and share data across the healthcare ecosystem using modern identity solutions, without needing multiple accounts.
