HealthLX Supports Gravity Project in Advancing Interoperability with SDOH Data

HealthLX Chosen to Develop First Reference Implementation

 

GRAFTON, WI (March 9, 2021) – HealthLX announced today that it is supporting the growing collaboration of healthcare systems, digital health companies, community-based organizations, government agencies, and consumer advocacy groups leading national efforts to accelerate social determinants of health (SDOH) data interoperability through the Gravity Project.

 A recognized pioneer in health information exchange, EHR, and enterprise clinical interoperability for healthcare payers, HealthLX is writing the first reference implementation (RI) for the Gravity Project, initially tested at the HL7® FHIR® (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resource) Connectathon in January of this year, and will further create further RIs as the use cases for Gravity expand and develop. As a founding and active member of the Da Vinci Project, HealthLX has long been involved in developing interoperability workflows and use cases that leverage the HL7® FHIR® standards.
 

“SDOH data interoperability is one of the most complex interoperability challenges faced by the healthcare industry, and we’re delighted to help solve it,” said Will Tesch, CEO of HealthLX. “By making standardized SDOH data accessible for both clinical and community-based services decision-making, there is incredible potential to help reduce costs and improve not only health outcomes but whole-person care. This will revolutionize healthcare by accelerating and enhancing integration of medical and social care.”

 The Gravity Project is defining coded data elements and associated value sets to represent social determinants of health data documented in EHRs across four clinical activities: screening, diagnosis, goals setting, and interventions. The project initially focused on three primary social risk domains: food insecurity, housing instability and quality, and transportation barriers. In late 2020, the project incorporated a multi-domain approach to include financial insecurity, demographics status, social isolation, material hardship, stress, and interpersonal violence.
 

The Gravity Project was initiated in November 2018 by SIREN with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. In 2019, the Gravity Project joined the HL7 FHIR Accelerator Program, which is designed to assist communities and collaborative groups across the global healthcare spectrum in the creation and adoption of high-quality FHIR Implementation Guides or other standard artifacts to move toward the realization of global health data interoperability. Other projects within the Accelerator Program include Argonaut, Da Vinci, CARIN Alliance, and CodeX.

 
“The reference implementation is the blueprint for how these workflows can be implemented in a real-world system,” said Charlie Provenzano, COO of HealthLX. “We’re proving out the technical aspects and identifying gaps and areas that need revision. Our thoroughness here will pave the way for more efficient development of the software that will put SDOH data into practical use.”

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