On July 30th the Administration announced progress toward building a smarter, more secure, and more personalized healthcare experience in 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 begin laying the foundation for a next-generation digital health ecosystem that will improve patient outcomes, reduce provider burden, and drive value.
“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.”
“We have the tools and information available now to empower patients to improve their outcomes and their healthcare experience,” said CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz. “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. With the commitments made by these entrepreneurial companies today, we stand ready for a paradigm shift in the U.S. healthcare system for the benefit of patients and providers.”
The Administration’s efforts focus on two broad areas: promoting a CMS Interoperability Framework to easily and seamlessly share information between patients and providers, and increasing the availability of personalized tools so that patients have the information and resources they need to make better health decisions.
“The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) supports actions that improve the timeliness in providing individuals with access to their electronic protected health information, without sacrificing health information privacy and security,” said OCR Director Paula M. Stannard. “If an individual receives another individual’s electronic protected health information in error, generally, OCR’s primary HIPAA enforcement interests are ensuring that the affected individual and HHS receive timely HIPAA breach notification.”
At the White House event, CMS unveiled voluntary criteria for trusted, patient-centered and practical data exchange that will be accessible for all network types—health information networks and exchanges, Electronic Health Records (EHR), and tech platforms.
More than 60 companies pledged to work collaboratively to deliver results for the American people in the first quarter of 2026. Twenty-one networks pledged to meet the CMS Interoperability Framework criteria to become CMS Aligned Networks. Eleven health systems or providers committed to participate and support patient use, and seven EHRs committed to facilitate data exchange and help “kill the clipboard.”
In addition, 30 companies pledged to promote real health outcomes with technology over the coming months. The new tools will use secure digital identity credentials to obtain medical records from CMS Aligned Networks that meet the CMS data sharing criteria. The apps will assist in the delivery of key services to beneficiaries including:
- Diabetes and obesity management;
- The use of conversational AI assistants to help patients check symptoms, navigate care options, and schedule appointments, among other tasks; and
- Tools to “kill the clipboard” by replacing paper intake forms with seamless digital check-in methods; and more.
A full list of companies who have currently pledged their support for CMS’ Health Tech Ecosystem initiative can be found here.
The White House event builds on the May 2025 request for information (RFI) issued jointly by CMS and the Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy (ASTP) to solicit suggestions from stakeholders on ways to modernize the nation’s digital health ecosystem. The CMS/ASTP RFI focused on empowering Medicare beneficiaries as well as the state of data interoperability and broader health technology infrastructure. In a little over a month, the RFI generated nearly 1,400 comments from patients, caregivers, providers, payers, technology developers, and others. These comments were instrumental in helping CMS form the vision and initiatives launched today.
An introductory video on CMS’ Health Tech Ecosystem initiative can be viewed here.
CMS plans to add an app library to Medicare.gov to highlight trusted, personalized digital health tools focused on prevention, chronic disease management, and cost-effective care navigation.
CMS also provided an update on progress made on foundational efforts in support of a new digital health ecosystem and that enhance the beneficiary experience (many announced at a June 3rd public meeting on the RFI):
- Enhanced Plan Finder: CMS will update its own tools to enhance the beneficiary experience, such as the Plan Finder that helps Medicare beneficiaries select which plan is best for their personal needs. This update will ensure that beneficiaries can select plans that have their preferred providers and hospitals in network. All proposed plans would protect privacy, secure personal health information, and comply with HIPAA requirements.
- 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, participants and relevant endpoints, while also improving data quality and mapping complex provider hierarchies. The agency will be launching initial functionality of the new provider directory and expand iteratively starting later this year.
- Modern Identity for Medicare.gov: CMS is working to add modern digital identity to Medicare.gov this year, exploring approaches that enhance security without disrupting current user accounts and services.
- Faster Blue Button Data: CMS is developing infrastructure to reduce the time between when claims are received and when they become accessible through Blue Button, accelerating data availability for patients and developers. Additionally, FHIR-based digital insurance cards will be available as soon as this year to app developers and Medicare.gov users.
- Data at the Point of Care (DPC): CMS is working to integrate digital identity and National Provider Directory validation into DPC during its continued development.
- Trusted Exchange & CMS-Aligned Networks: As a major step forward, CMS announced today the new CMS-Aligned Networks concept based on the CMS Interoperability Framework. CMS is leading by example and plans to participate in trusted data exchange by responding to patient and provider queries and sharing Blue Button claims data through CMS aligned networks as early as the first quarter of 2026. For the first time, patients will be able to access their data using modern identity solutions, without needing to set up accounts and remember usernames and passwords for each healthcare website. This leap will dramatically improve how patients can securely access and share their records across the healthcare ecosystem.
For the latest information on CMS’ Health Tech Ecosystem initiative visit here.