HL7 AI Strategic Initiatives

    HL7 Strategic Approach to AI

    Artificial intelligence (AI) holds great promise for improving quality, safety, and effectiveness, as well as reducing healthcare costs. As healthcare organizations increasingly adopt AI technologies, there is great opportunity—but also risk—in how these tools are deployed to achieve these goals. 

    Recognizing that standards and interoperability play a key role in the success and uptake of AI tools in healthcare, HL7 launched a series of AI-related activities in 2024. These activities include integration of AI tools and technologies within many of HL7’s internal processes and more than 40 work groups, including the HL7 Electronic Health Records Work Group, as well as the launch of three strategic initiatives, outlined below.

    HL7 Strategic Initiatives on AI

    Initiative #1: Use of AI to Counter Fraud and Improve Payment Integrity
    • Focus: Define opportunities and develop recommendations for using AI to improve payment integrity and reduce fraud, waste, and abuse by leveraging interoperability, electronic health information exchange, and standards
    • Outcomes: Summary of current landscape and opportunities for improving the use of AI to improve payment integrity and reduce fraud, waste, and abuse, focusing on data access and interoperability needs, data governance frameworks, and implementation strategies
    • Leadership: Co-chaired by Janet Marchibroda and J. Marc Overhage, MD, PhD
    • Link to Report Page: Reducing Fraud and Improving Payment Integrity in Healthcare Through the Use of AI

    Initiative #2: AI Challenge
    • Details coming soon

    Initiative #3: Information Provenance
    • Focus: Extend HL7 standards to record information provenance generated by AI systems in health records
    • Outcome: Enable stakeholders to discern the origins of AI-generated health information
    • Leadership: Co-chaired by Dan Vreeman, DPT, and Diego Kaminker

    Strategic AI Endeavors for HL7

    Across these different efforts, HL7 thanks David Bray, PhD, MSPH, Chair of the Accelerator and Distinguished Fellow at the Stimson Center, for providing expert counsel and guidance to HL7 AI initiatives, to include the intersections of standards-based approaches to AI in healthcare as well as the importance of interoperable data and systems in healthcare. 

    Here is a recent CxOTalk video discussing AI in Healthcare: 

    HL7 AI Work Groups

    A list of existing AI projects is available in Confluence at: https://confluence.hl7.org/display/HAA additional work groups are invited to add their information to keep the HL7 Community up to date as well.