“The administrative burden placed on patients and their care partners to use and share their health records must be addressed.” – Grace Cordovano, Consumer Voices co-chair

I’m thrilled that at this week’s DevDays FHIR developer conference, the patient keynote will be delivered by Bren Shipley, head of the Consumer Voices workgroup at the Sequoia Project.

For ten years the Sequoia Project has advocated for nationwide health information exchange, so their interest in FHIR is obvious. In February they launched a new Consumer Voices workgroup (press release), which parallels the sentiment of my 2019 post “HL7 makes it official: FHIR exists to serve patient needs.“

Sequoia’s Brenda (“Bren”) Shipley will be the speaker. We’ve never met (until today) and I won’t let the cat out of the bag regarding her talk, but suffice it to say, she and her eight-member patient workgroup independently developed principles based on real world stories that prove again how much suffering can result when health data is not at the point of need.

We must fix this. Welcome to Sequoia’s Consumer Voices! FHIR’s Patient Empowerment workgroup has found an important new ally.