Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., head of the Department of Health and Human Services, and other government and healthcare technology leaders have committed to delivering a patient-centric digital health ecosystem.
At an event hosted by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services at the White House, over 60 companies pledged to collaborate and deliver results that benefit the public in the first quarter of 2026. Meanwhile, 11 health systems and providers said they will support patient use. Seven electronic health record companies pledged to facilitate data exchange.
According to Kennedy, bureaucrats and entrenched interests have made health data inaccessible to patients, preventing them from taking better control of their health..
“We’re tearing down digital walls, returning power to patients, and rebuilding a health system that serves the people,” he added. “This is how we begin to Make America Healthy Again.”
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What Was the White House Health IT Event?
The event, called Make Health Tech Great Again, was attended by healthcare and technology firms, such as Oracle, Apple, Amazon, Google, Anthropic and OpenAI.
In a press release, Seema Verma, executive vice president and general manager at Oracle Health and Life Sciences and a Wash100 winner, thanked the administration for leading efforts to remove “the walled gardens that have thwarted true healthcare data interoperability.”
“We look forward to working across the healthcare ecosystem to deliver a secure, interoperable, standards-based and [artificial intelligence]-enabled medical records system that will foster medical breakthroughs and support better outcomes and experiences for patients and the medical professionals that care for them,” she commented.
CMS Interoperability Framework
One of the event’s agenda is the introduction of the CMS Interoperability Framework, which promotes information-sharing between patients and providers. According to CMS, 21 networks have already committed to meet framework requirements and become CMS Aligned Networks.
Involvement in the framework is voluntary and is open to any network.
New Health IT
At the event, 30 companies also committed to delivering real-world health outcomes through technologies that utilize secure digital identity credentials to access medical records from CMS Aligned Networks.
The technologies will include a tool for diabetes and obesity management; a conversational AI assistant for checking symptoms or scheduling appointments; and a platform that can replace paper forms with digital check-in methods.
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