Health tech ecosystem marks year one as patient access to records rises to 60%

HHS and partner agencies on Thursday celebrated the first anniversary of the federal health tech ecosystem, citing rapid uptake of patient-facing record-sharing tools and a push to move the technology from novelty to routine. "If you don't know it already, the number I want you to remember is 60 percent," said Chris Klomp, who was introduced as the nominee for deputy secretary, describing what he called the share of U.S. patients who can now access their records in an app of their choice.

Federal and industry leaders said the progress reflected a mix of agency-built infrastructure and private-sector products. An HHS official pointed to the trusted exchange framework and said a related network has scaled from exchanging 10,000,000 records in its early years to 1,400,000,000 in the last 12 months. Tom Keane, introduced as the national coordinator for health IT, described the model as a partnership: "No one organization can do this alone ... it takes all of us." The officials listed CMS deliverables, including a Medicare app library and a national provider directory, as components that made the apps useful to patients and providers.

Speakers cautioned that the metric measures technical capability, not uniform clinical workflow adoption. "Patients are ahead of the providers," Klomp said, urging health systems to adopt processes to receive shared records and pointing to CMS guidance and open-source tools meant to help EHR vendors and clinic staff accept smart health links and QR codes. Officials described year two priorities as increasing provider readiness, supporting implementation, and expanding use cases that can be measured for reimbursement.

The article draws on remarks given at the anniversary event where agency officials and industry partners outlined next steps for scaling interoperability and listed concrete CMS tools that are already in production.