CMS Announces Agency’s First Blue Button 2.0 Developer Conference

Today, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced it is hosting the first-ever Blue Button® 2.0 Developer Conference. This event is being held in Washington, D.C. at the General Services Administration national headquarters on Monday, August 13, 2018. The Blue Button® 2.0 Developer Conference will provide a networking opportunity that brings together developers to learn, build software, and share insights on how Medicare claims data can be leveraged to improve health outcomes. In addition, the conference will help further advance the work of the MyHealthEData, a governmentwide initiative led by the White House Office of American Innovation.

MyHealthEData is designed to empower patients around a common aim - giving every American control of their medical data to enable them to make better choices for value driven healthcare.  MyHealthEData will also help to break down the barriers that prevent patients from having electronic access and true control of their own health records from the device or application of their choice. This allows patients to choose the provider that best meets their needs and then give that provider secure access to their data, leading to greater competition and reducing costs.

“The inaugural Blue Button® 2.0 Developer Conference will bring together application developers in the technical community to help build and develop new tools to help patients understand their health data,” said Administrator Verma. “This conference is the perfect venue for developers to network with each other and with leaders in the federal government to collaborate on ways to engage Medicare beneficiaries to make informed healthcare decisions.”

Developers will have an opportunity to get real-time feedback and meet the CMS engineering team up. This event will include hands-on sessions for the technical community to create or build upon their Blue Button 2.0 application, with guidance and feedback from the Blue Button 2.0 team, patient advocates, and other experts. Attendees will also have the opportunity to see the many ways in which organizations are integrating with Blue Button 2.0 to improve health outcomes for Medicare beneficiaries through application demonstrations.

As part of MyHealthEData, CMS has securely released four years of Medicare Part A, B and D data for 53 million Medicare beneficiaries. This data contains a variety of information about a beneficiary’s health, including type of Medicare coverage, drug prescriptions, primary care treatment and cost. This release allowed Medicare beneficiaries to have full control over how their data can be used and by whom, with identity and authorization controlled by MyMedicare.gov to ensure their information remains secure and private. With the release of this data, CMS wants to work with developers to create new applications that help make this data more helpful and meaningful for patients.

To get more information and to register for this event, please visit the Blue Button® 2.0 Developer Conference website.