Advertise on podcast: EXPLORING HEALTHCARE INTEROPERABILITY

In this episode: Vivian S Lee, MD, PHD, MBA, served as president of Health Platforms at Verily (Alphabet's health company and senior lecturer at Harvard Medical School. Educated at Harvard, Oxford, Duke, and NYU, she has had a distinguished career as a practicing physician, scientist, and health care leader. In 2020, she was named by Modern Healthcare as one of the 50 Most Influential Clinical Executives.

In this episode: Imran Qureshi (b.well Connected Health) FHIRside chat with Diego Kaminker (Health Level Seven International) and Daniel Vreeman (Health Level Seven International) recorded live at DevDays 2026.

Rachel is a globally recognized leader in health data standards, interoperability, and digital health policy. She previously served as CEO of openEHR International, driving worldwide engagement to advance open, interoperable health data. Her career focuses on international collaboration and translating standards into practical implementation. Ewout Kramer: Firely FHIR Evangelist Ewout is one of the initiators and a long-standing expert of HL7 FHIR, the modern standard central to healthcare interoperability worldwide. With decades of experience in healthcare IT, he played a key role in designing and documenting FHIR. As Firely's CTO, he focuses on turning these standards into practical solutions for widespread organizational adoption. Ward Weistra: Firely Product Manager Ward brings significant experience in business analysis and project management, having delivered services to top pharmaceutical companies and international research projects. He previously held a leading role at The Hyve, an open-source software services company, and holds a Master of Science in Bioinformatics

In this episode we have 3 guests: Sam Schifman - Chief Innovation Architect for Healthcare, Vantiq Sam Schifman is a seasoned software architect with deep expertise across industries including healthcare, finance, education, and cybersecurity. He entered Healthcare IT in 2019 as Chief Architect at Diameter Health, where he focused on unlocking clinical data for government agencies, insurers, and Health Information Exchanges. A longtime advocate for responsible AI, Sam has worked with HL7 on AI standards, explored NLP and GenAI in clinical contexts, and frequently shares his insights as a speaker and guest lecturer at institutions like Harvard and conferences such as HIMSS. Now at Vantiq, he’s focused on how Adaptive Automation / Agentic AI will empower the future of healthcare and improve outcomes for all. Carol Macumber - Chair Elect, HL7 International Carol Macumber is an Executive Vice President leading Client Services at Clinical Architecture. Carol was an elected member of the International Health Terminology Standards Development Organization (IHTSDO, now SNOMED International) Technical Committee, is Chair-Elect of the HL7 Board of Directors, co-chair of the HL7 Terminology Services Management Group and the HL7 Terminology Infrastructure Work Group and a Fellow of the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA). Benji Graham - FHIR Evangelist, Bellese Technologies Benji Graham - FHIR Evangelist, Bellese Technologies FHIR Evangelist. Health Data Interoperability Leader. HL7 Certified Educator. Benji has a passion for standards improvement, process simplification, and thought leadership. He wants to be a part of the community that makes healthcare in the US truly interoperable.

Carl Leitner is a Technical Officer at the World Health Organization in Geneva. He used to be the Technical Director of Digital Square at PATH and the Associate Director of Health Workforce Informatics at IntraHealth. With over 20 years of experience in informatics, IT, software development, and education, Carl has spent more than 14 of those years adapting and designing health information systems for low- and middle-income countries. He has worked closely with many global digital health tools and regularly collaborates with organizations that develop health informatics standards, even co-authoring several of them himself.

Welcome to Episode 24 of Exploring Healthcare Interoperability. Today we’re joined by Chuck Jaffe, CEO of Health Level Seven International (HL7), a key figure in advancing global healthcare standards. Chuck shares insights into the current challenges and future opportunities for interoperability, the evolving role of the FHIR standard, and HL7’s strategic vision for healthcare innovation. Join us to discover how global standards are shaping the future of patient care.

José Costa Teixeira , HL7 Belgium, Chair

Dr. Daniel Vreeman, HL7 International ,  Chief Standards Development Officer

Julia Skapik is the Chair of HL7 International and also the Chief Medical Information Officer for the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC) USA

Member, IHE International Board Deputy Co-chair, IHE Europe Executive Board, Global Consortium for eHealth Interoperability Gemini Steering Committee Co-chair, IHE Global Deployment Coordination Committee

Director for Terminology Management / Johns Hopkins University/ Biomedical Informatics & Data Science HL7 Terminology Services Management Group (TSMG)/ HL7 Vulcan Accelerator Operations Committee Vulcan FHIR-to-OMOP co-Lead / OHDSI OMOP + FHIR Working Group Lead / OHDSI CDM Vocabulary Working Group Liaison to HL7

Experienced executive with a demonstrated history of working in the health care industry. Skilled in government procurement, digital strategy, healthcare information technology (HIT), program development, change management and delivery. Strong business development professional with post graduate qualifications in Public Health from University of Sydney.

As one of the top 2% scientists in the world, Prof. Li is a pioneer of artificial intelligence in medicine and translational biomedical informatics. He has devoted himself to evolving the next generation of Al in patient safety and prevention ("Earlier Medicine"). He has also been deeply involved in international cooperation for biomedical informatics development in Asia, America, Europe, and Africa. He is currently serving as President of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) and previously served as Vice President of IMIA and President of the Asia-Pacific Association for Medical Informatics. Besides, he has been elected as a fellow of the Australia College of Health Informatics in 2009, the American College of Medical Informatics in 2010, and the International Academy of Health Science Informatics in 2017.

Ursula Hübner, Professor of Medical and Health Informatics and Quantitative Methods, Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences, Associate Dean for Digitalisation and Qualification of Young Scientists, IMIA Secretary and IAHSI Fellow I am an HL7 member in Germany for twenty years and our research group is actively involved in the community

Dr. Huff is the Chief Medical Informatics Officer at Graphite Health, and a Professor (Clinical) of Biomedical Informatics at the University of Utah. He is board certified in Clinical Pathology. He has worked in the area of medical vocabularies and medical database architecture for the past 30+ years. He is currently a fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics, a co-chair of the LOINC Committee, and a co-chair of the HL7 Clinical Information Modeling Initiative (CIMI). He is also the Chair of Logica (formerly the Healthcare Services Platform Consortium (HSPC)) and the Chair of the FHIR Foundation. He is the former CMIO at Intermountain Healthcare, a former member of the ONC HIT Standards Committee and a former member of NCVHS. He is also a previous Chair (twice) of Health Level Seven (HL7). He teaches a course in medical vocabulary and data exchange standards in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at the University of Utah.