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By RIEN WERTHEIM

FHIR DevDays, run by Rien Wertheim’s company Firely in conjuncion with HL7, is the premier FHIR event in the world, with editions in the US and Europe. The three pillars for DevDays are Learn, Code and Share. The event runs from 15 to 18 June, 1 to 5 PM EST. This year’s edition will be 100% virtual. Tracks include the ONC and CMS Final Rules and COVID-19 on FHIR. I will be opening and moderating that last track–Matthew Holt.

The Patient Innovator Competition at DevDays US 2020

Have you ever wondered what would happen if patients had access to their data from hospitals, labs and other sources? Some still doubt the value of data at the fingertips of patients. So, we went the extra mile to see how this would look in practice and the results were impressive.

To give some context, every year we run DevDays, which is a semi-annual conference for health data programmers working with FHIR. FHIR is the open and standardized API for healthcare. What APIs have done for other industries, FHIR is doing for healthcare. That is, enabling an app economy: apps for doctors, researchers, payers, even apps for the government and, above all, apps for patients.

A lot of these of these apps are built by EMR vendors, even more by startups, and some by patients. Last year we launched the Patient Innovator Track at DevDays to give patients a voice. The track gives the stage to tech-savvy patients who are taking control of their health using data about their disease and treatment. The track wants to prove a point: access to health data can improve our lives. It also shows the unimagined things people can do with data when their health is at stake.

Four finalists pitched for the Patient Innovator Award. In the end it was John Keyes that blew everyone away. John is a blood disease patient who created a simple app to track his blood count and ongoing test results. The app is called BloodNumbers and it consolidates test data from multiple health care providers, making it easy to view and share results if you want to.

We are looking for more tech-savvy patients, developers and IT experts like John, to apply for this year’s Patient Innovator Track. All you need to do is pitch an app, device or other technology that allows you to use your own health data to improve your wellbeing. The finalists get a free ticket to DevDays US 2020 Virtual Edition where they can  learn all about FHIR and connect with the community. The winner gets to walk away with $2,500. On the jury we have Dave deBronkart (“ePatient Dave”) and Grahame Grieve, the founder of FHIR. Check out what Dave wrote about the Patient Innovator Track here.

You can register and find more details here.

Rien Wertheim is CEO of Firely and the host of FHIR DevDays