Not all heroes wear capes – sometimes, they wear white coats.
Health Gorilla Chief Medical Officer Steven Lane, MD, MPH has been recognized as a DirectTrust Interoperability Hero. DirectTrust is a non-profit healthcare industry alliance created to support secure, identity-verified electronic exchanges of protected health information.
Dr. Lane, who joined Health Gorilla as its CMO in 2022, is a well-known leader in the world of health data who uses his deep industry knowledge and connections to lead several organizations and initiatives to success. He grounds his interoperability work in practice as a family physician and infuses this experience into boards and committees throughout the HIT ecosystem.
“Steven exemplifies how the American health system is learning, using, and proving the value of interoperability of health information exchange,” said Scott Stuewe, President and CEO of DirectTrust. “We’re delighted to recognize Steven as an Interoperability Hero.”
Dr. Lane has been creating tools and refining standards for interoperability for over 25 years, including as Clinical Informatics Director of Privacy, Information Security, and Interoperability at Sutter Health.
He was a founding co-chair of DirectTrust’s Clinician Steering Group that defined the potential of the Direct protocol to transform clinician workflow and thereby quality of patient care. He is chairman of the Carequality Steering Committee and serves on The Sequoia Project Board of Directors, as well as the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC)’s Health Information Technology Advisory Committee (HITAC), the HIMSS Interoperability & HIE Committee, and the Da Vinci Project Clinical Advisory Council.
He is also helping the California Health and Human Services Agency (CalHHS) Center for Data Insights and Innovation to develop and implement the state's first-ever healthcare Data Exchange Framework (DxF). Health Gorilla was recently designated as a Qualified Health Information Organization (QHIO) under the DxF in California, and is a candidate Qualified Health Information Network (QHIN) under the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA) for nationwide exchange.
“I am honored to be inducted into the community of DirectTrust InteropHeroes” said Dr. Lane. “DirectTrust represents a vibrant community of health IT professionals, clinicians, and patient advocates that works tirelessly to advance interoperability and improve healthcare workflows.”
Each quarter, DirectTrust opens a window for Interoperability Hero nominations based on significant contribution in a variety of categories, including fax alternatives, collaboration with others, identity-proofing, organizational efficiencies, and using Direct with other standards and networks (e.g., FHIR, Query). Entities meeting the criteria are recognized as an Interoperability Hero and announced in DirectTrust’s quarterly metrics release. For additional information about DirectTrust’s Interoperability Hero initiative, visit directtrust.org/interop-hero.
Health Gorilla Chief Technology Officer and Co-founder Andrei Zudin was recognized as an InteropHero in 2022.
Other Interop Heroes in this class are:
- Zoe Barber, The Sequoia Project
- Jason Johnson, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
- Jocelyn Keegan, Point of Care Partners
- Shelley Mannino, Velatura
- Jay Nakashima, eHealth Exchange
- Lisa Nicolaou, MiHIN
- Sandeep Savarala, Boston Consulting Group
- Michelle Suitor, UHIN
- Alan Swenson, Carequality
You can read about all the honorees here.
