CMS announced June 20th, 2018 that they will be holding their first ever developer conference for the Blue Button 2.0 initiative. The conference is to be held August 13, 2018, in Washington D.C.
“The inaugural Blue Button 2.0 Developer Conference will bring together application developers in the technical community to help build and develop new tools to help patients understand their health data,” said Administrator Verma. “This conference is the perfect venue for developers to network with each other and with leaders in the federal government to collaborate on ways to engage Medicare beneficiaries to make informed healthcare decisions.”
What’s Blue Button 2.0?
Blue Button 2.0 is a developer-friendly, standards-based API that enables Medicare beneficiaries to connect their claims data to the applications, services and research programs they trust.
The Blue Button 2.0 initiative is part of the Trump administration’s MyHealthEData program, which was announced March 6th, 2018. The goal of the program is to give patients control of their healthcare information so that they can be empowered to make informed decisions about their health and care.
Why you should get excited…
The CMS Blue Button API:
- Enables a developer to register a beneficiary-facing application
- Enables a beneficiary to grant an application access to four years of their Part A, B, and D claims data
- Uses the HL7 FHIR standard for beneficiary data and the OAuth 2.0 standard for beneficiary authorization
If you want more information check out CMS’s Blue Button webpage.