Elkridge, Md. — Onyx Technology LLC and AMA Innovations Inc., a technology development subsidiary of the American Medical Association, today announced a collaboration to build connections between health care providers and social services organizations. The intent is to support holistic health and social care by improving links between health care providers and social care networks. The companies will combine their technical expertise to deliver a powerful, HL7^® FHIR^®-based interoperability solution in response to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Administration for Community Living’s (ACL) Innovative Technology Solutions for Social Care Referrals Challenge.

“Most stakeholders in the health community already understand the intersection between effective health care, public health, and the surrounding community, but the outbreak of COVID-19 brought this issue to the forefront,” said Susheel Ladwa, Onyx Technology’s CEO. “Working with AMA Innovations, Onyx will use the power of FHIR-based interoperability to allow for a new level of secure data sharing that respects patient privacy, and together, we will pursue ACL’s challenge grant.”

Onyx and AMA Innovations will develop FIRE Wire, an easy-to-use secure messaging solution that will support FHIR-based application programming interfaces (APIs) to link health care provider and social services directories. AMA Innovations will build a directory service, publish appropriate standards through HL7, and provide strategic oversight and guidance around the solution. Onyx will develop a secure messaging solution and end-user applications that leverage the directory. If the companies’ entry is accepted into the Challenge, they will present a demo version to ACL in the first half of 2021.

“AMA Innovations' reach into medical community's unique knowledge-base and its expertise in delivering clinically relevant solutions, combined with Onyx’s unique expertise with FHIR, will allow us to deliver on the next level of health data sharing while complying with applicable privacy law and best practices,” said AMA Innovations Vice President Tom Giannulli, MD, MS. “FIRE Wire is a lightweight, standards-based messaging and directory solution designed to facilitate secure, private, point-to-point patient information and referral exchange between individuals across organizations. With FIRE Wire, physicians and others will be able to easily establish trust and exchange messages and structured health information.”