HHS’ Andrea Palm and ONC’s Micky Tripathi To Keynote The Sequoia Project and Carequality Joint Annual Meeting

VIENNA, Va., Nov. 09, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Sequoia Project, a non-profit and trusted advocate for nationwide health IT interoperability, announced keynote speakers Andrea Palm, Deputy Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and Micky Tripathi, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. The keynotes are set for its 2023 Annual Meeting with Carequality, the non-profit trusted framework for nationwide health information exchange.

Tripathi will address perspectives from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). He will share the journey of TEFCA’s development and implementation, and ONC’s vision as the first candidate Qualified Health Information Networks (QHINs) move toward designation and go-live. Palm will discuss perspectives from HHS at 10 a.m. on Nov. 16 in San Diego. She is the HHS chief operating officer and responsible for overseeing the day-to-day operations across the agency.

The keynotes will complement other annual meeting speakers, including Mariann Yeager, CEO of The Sequoia Project, who will address the non-profit’s latest developments and upcoming priorities for 2024, and Alan Swenson, Carequality’s executive director, who will provide opening remarks and Carequality updates on the second day. Swenson will moderate a panel titled “QHINs Aren’t Real (Yet),” where candidate QHINs including eHealth Exchange, Health Gorilla, and CommonWell Health Alliance will discuss roll-out plans, prospective participants, and turning their attention to future use cases and Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR). Zoe Barber, policy director of The Sequoia Project, will moderate a QHIN panel titled “It Takes Two (or More) to TEFCA” with candidate QHINs KONZA National Network, Epic Nexus, MedAllies, and Kno2.

The agenda includes a session titled “Consumer Voices: Listening Is Just the First Step,” where Shamekka Marty, a member of The Sequoia Project’s Consumer Voices Workgroup, will share her compelling health IT experience as a patient and caregiver. She will be joined by workgroup co-chairs Anna McCollister and Grace Cordovano on a panel to discuss how today’s patient experience can be improved. The agenda includes sessions that provide updates on other Sequoia workgroups, such as “Government Affairs: What’s in Store for ’24,” “Data Usability: A Movement Take Root,” and “Payer-to-Payer API: Playing Outside the Sandbox.”

“Not Another FHIR Pun” will be a lively discussion of the potential and current reality of FHIR today, moderated by Carequality’s senior program manager, Bill Mehegan, and featuring panelists from Health Gorilla, Meditech, PointClickCare, Surescripts, and eHealth Exchange. In addition, there will be “unconference” sessions on topics such as patient access, image exchange, working as a community, and more.

Alan Lau from Canada Health Infoway will discuss the Shared Pan-Canadian Interoperability Roadmap and how The Sequoia Project is working with Canada Health Infoway as it advances a pan-Canadian trusted exchange framework.

To see the full agenda and conference sponsors, visit https://sequoiaproject.org/2023-annual-meeting/. The Sequoia Project and Carequality joint annual meeting runs Nov. 15-17.

About The Sequoia Project

The Sequoia Project is a non-profit, 501c3, public-private collaborative chartered to advance implementation of secure, interoperable nationwide health information exchange. The Sequoia Project focuses on solving real-world interoperability challenges and brings together public and private stakeholders in forums, such as the Interoperability Matters cooperative, to overcome barriers. The Sequoia Project is the Recognized Coordinating Entity (RCE) for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT’s Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA). In this role, The Sequoia Project developed and will implement and maintain TEFCA’s Common Agreement component and operationalize the Qualified Health Information Network (QHIN) designation and monitoring process.