The Helios FHIR Accelerator for Public Health is a collaborative initiative that includes network organizations (QHIN, HIE, HIN), state, tribal, local, and territorial (STLT) public health agencies, health information technology (HIT) vendors, federal partners, and private-sector organizations. Its primary goal is to align with the widespread standardization and transformation happening in digital health data today to promote more flexible and effective data exchange among healthcare, the public, and other sectors beyond public health.
Helios addresses ongoing public health challenges by ensuring that data modernization efforts incorporate market-based solutions and align with nationwide interoperability priorities. The alliance focuses on extending and adopting existing FHIR specifications in ways that are flexible, accurate, scalable, sustainable and responsive. By doing so, Helios aims to keep public health needs at the forefront as FHIR standards evolve and are implemented nationwide.
Highlights
Our accelerator teams have been hard at work since our last update. We continue to explore new FHIR capabilities and bring FHIR to the larger public health community. A summary of some significant Helios initiatives follows.
Make Critical Measures Available to Public Health in Aggregate
Under the guidance of Ravi Kafle (Washington Department of Health) and Hans Buitendijk (Oracle Health), the Aggregate Data Priority Area is collaborating with the US Situational Awareness Framework for Reporting (US SAFR) Implementation Guide project team to align FHIR-based reporting requirements to support public health decision-making in areas such as healthcare capacity and situational awareness. By working together, Helios and US SAFR can ensure that data submitters can implement a single, reusable infrastructure for reporting sentinel metrics to their local public health agency. Helios and US SAFR have held joint testing tracks at both HL7 Connectathons and Helios virtual testing events. Testing participants, including both public health agencies and HIT vendors, have been able to exchange FHIR MeasureReports for both Bed Capacity and Hospital Respiratory Data (HRD) cases. We encourage both public health and HIT vendors to join the biweekly calls to continue advancing this critical work.
Bulk Data as a Mechanism for Exchanging Data on Populations
Led by John Stamm (Epic) and Mary Beth Kurilo (American Immunization Registry Association), the Bulk Data Priority Area is exploring ways to enable authorized users of public health data to access complete, accurate, and timely information on their patient and member populations in bulk. As our first use case, we are exploring how Immunization Information Systems (IIS) can share immunization history in bulk with their trading partners.
Several STLTs are actively implementing FHIR Bulk Data to share immunization data. The Rhode Island Department of Health is working on an innovative partnership to share data with a local community college to ensure the health and safety of their students. With assistance from the Public Health FHIR Implementation Collaborative Phase 3 Project, the Washington State Department of Health and Public Health – Seattle & King County are collaborating on a FHIR-based Bulk Data solution to ensure that local investigations of vaccine-preventable diseases have efficient access to the data needed to safeguard the community.
We would also like to thank all participants in the Bulk Data Priority Area for their hard work in making our Helios Bulk Data White Paper a reality. Balloted in the January 2025 cycle, the white paper coalesces much of the information and experience that the Priority Area has gathered over the course of the project into a comprehensive overview of the application of FHIR Bulk Data to a public health use case. After a swift and uneventful reconciliation of ballot comments, Helios proudly published its first official artifact in June 2025. We recommend that everyone access the document through the HL7 Standards Master Grid to learn more about this project. We also encourage anyone to reach out with their ideas on how we can advance the implementation of Bulk FHIR for public health!
Retrieve Patient Health Information from Electronic Health Records (EHR) Systems Using FHIR
Under the leadership of Angel Aponte (New York City) , Bill Howard (eHealth Exchange), Dan Paseltiner (Skylight), and Tina Hardin (JMC) the Query & Response Priority Area is working to demonstrate how the FHIR Query and Response paradigm can help meet high-priority public health needs efficiently and effectively, while also returning valuable and actionable information to care providers.
The Priority Area continues to see fantastic participation on our regular calls and at testing events. Most recently, HL7 FHIR Connectathon 40 in Pittsburgh saw three public health agencies (New York City, Washington/University of Washington and Oregon) attend and collaborate with eHealth Exchange, Skylight, HLN Consulting, J Michael Consulting, Altarum, Veradigm, and Epic to test public health query use cases. In addition to testing case investigation and laboratory order workflows, participants were able to test a fan-out query that is expected to be a vital part of public health’s ability to access critical, authorized data without needing to know in advance which systems hold the data!
Hot on the heels of the Bulk Data White Paper, the Query & Response Priority Area has created an informative document of its own. Balloted in the September 2025 cycle, the Helios Query & Response White Paper covers the ins and outs of leveraging FHIR APIs made available by healthcare providers to streamline and strengthen data collection supporting public health activities. Ballot reconciliation will proceed through the fall, with plans to publish the white paper in early 2026. Be sure to keep an eye out for the release announcement.
On our bi-weekly project team calls, we continue to explore topics related to FHIR queries and to bring your use cases to the table. Please join us!
How to be part of Helios
Helios is currently recruiting organizations to actively participate in current discussions, future testing events, and piloting efforts. There are no membership fees to participate in Helios, so that everyone can get involved!
Everyone can participate by:
- Bringing your public health interoperability pain points to us to learn what FHIR can do for you. FHIR offers new possibilities for public health, and we can help you understand how to address your current interoperability needs.
- Applying your FHIR tools to public health use cases at HL7 FHIR Connectathons and other Helios testing events. We need tool developers playing a wide range of roles in public health data exchange to help evaluate FHIR-based approaches and develop technical solutions.
- Talking to your colleagues and technical teams about how to take the next step towards piloting a real-world solution.
If you are ready, willing, and able to help drive public health interoperability forward, please reach out to us at helios@hl7.org to join our team!
