During a “Make Health Tech Great Again” event held at the White House with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the Trump Administration vowed to build a “smarter, more secure, and more personalised healthcare experience” with commitments from private sector companies including Amazon, Apple, Google, and OpenAI.
Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., stated: “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.”
The event followed on from a joint request for information (RFI) issued in May 2025 by CMS and the Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy, seeking suggestions for the US’s digital health ecosystem. 1,400 comments were received from patients, caregivers, providers, tech developers, and others, which CMS says were “instrumental” in helping inform the newly-launched initiatives. The CMS Health Technology Ecosystem calls on the healthcare industry to voluntarily align around a shared framework for data and access to help improve care and accelerate progress.
Focuses will be on promoting a CMS Interoperability Framework to facilitate information sharing between patients and providers, and increasing the availability of personalised tools to enable patients to make better health decisions. So far, 60 suppliers have pledged to “work collaboratively to deliver results for the American people in the first quarter of 2026”, whilst 21 networks have agreed to meet the CMS Interoperability Framework criteria to become CMS Aligned Networks. 11 health systems and providers will also be supporting patient use, and seven EHRs have committed to facilitating data exchange.
The interoperability framework sets out a series of criteria around patient access and empowerment, provider access and delegation, data availability and standards compliance, network connectivity, and security. It focuses on patient choice and their ability to access medical information from anywhere, the implementation of FHIR APIs to facilitate data access, and access control. “For criteria that are less mature, early adopters will collaborate with CMS to document and publish implementation guidelines,” the CMS’s guidance states.
“30 companies pledged to promote real health outcomes with technology over the coming months,” CMS shares. “The new tools will use secure digital identity credentials to obtain medical records from CMS Aligned Networks that meet the CMS data sharing criteria.” Apps to be used to deliver key services cover diabetes and obesity management, AI assistants for symptom checking and appointment scheduling, and tools to help replace paper intake with digital check-in.
CMS also shares plans to develop an app library to highlight trusted digital health tools with a focus on prevention and chronic disease management. An enhanced plan finder will help Medicare beneficiaries select which plan is best for their personal needs, whilst work has begun on building a Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR)-based Application Programming Interface (API) to support app development, and modern digital identity is expected to be introduced later this year.
Wider trend: Healthcare reform and the move from reactive to proactive care
We were joined for a recent HTN Now panel discussion focusing on the move from reactive to proactive care by experts from across the sector, including Dan Bunstone, clinical director at Warrington ICB; Patrick Denston, PCN digital transformation and change manager at Frimley ICB; Pete Thomas, CCIO and executive director of digital development at Moorfields Eye Hospital; and Joseph Waller, director at Aire Logic. The session looked at how NHS organisations are beginning to make the transition to proactive care, the kinds of data and digital tools required to make the change, and the impacts beginning to be seen on patient care, outcomes, and operational pressures.
A separate panel discussion focused on dissecting the findings from Lord Darzi’s report, reflecting on what is holding the NHS back from innovation; the challenges and missed opportunities; and the role of digital and tech in driving change, supporting a focus on prevention and promoting integrated care. Panellists included Lee Rickles, CIO, director & deputy SIRO at Humber Teaching Hospitals; Andrew Jones, digital transformation leader at Amazon Web Services; Tracy McClelland, CCIO at Dedalus; and Dan Bunstone, clinical director at Warrington Innovation Network and Warrington ICB.
The UK government has published its Fit for the Future: The 10 Year Health Plan for England, aiming to “build a truly modern NHS”, with focus on moving from hospital to community, analogue to digital and sickness to prevention. The plan outlines a new operating model, a new era of transparency, a new workforce model with staff aligned to the direction, a reshaped innovation strategy, and a different approach to NHS finances. AI, technology and digital tools play a key role in realising the ambitions in the plan, with the UK government signalling the intention for patients to gain “real control through a single, secure and authoritative account of their data and single patient record” aiming to deliver more co-ordinated, personalised and predictive care.
