Rasu Shrestha, chief innovation officer at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, has been selected to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs‘s Open Application Programming Interface pledge.
He will oversee the department’s efforts to collaborate with providers to accelerate the mapping pace of healthcare data to industry standards such as Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources standard, VA said Monday.
VA Secretary David Shulkin announced the API initiative at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society Conference.
Eleven providers have signed up to support the program during the HIMSS event and several other institutions have expressed interest to join the pledge, the department noted.
VA has created a Lighthouse Lab open API for developers to produce web and mobile healthcare information technology applications for military veterans.
The department also seeks to facilitate electronic health record interoperability, as well as the design, test and enactment of FHIR API implementation guidelines for the Argonaut Project.
Pledge participants will meet for an initial roundtable discussion in April to set the collaborative approach with the VA and standards community for the application of existing Argonaut implementation guides.
