Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

14. Department of Health and Human Services · Minor

Enter a public–private partnership to build a real-time health data system

Partially done

454 14. Department of Health and Human Services

“HHS should also enter into a public–private partnership with a data-management expert to develop a system that makes critical information available to health care workers and policymakers in real time.”

What has happened

  1. Partially done

    CMS launched the first wave: "more than 700 organizations have pledged support", and CMS highlighted tools from "more than 50 companies, many of which are already accessible", calling them "the first real-world implementation of a connected digital health ecosystem". A mechanism in place and a piece delivered, which is §3's `partial`. **The boundary call, recorded because it is real.** The Quote asks for a system that makes critical information available to "health care workers and policymakers" in real time, and the CMS ecosystem is presented throughout as *patient*-centric. Its provider-facing limbs exist but are secondary — the National Provider Directory, Data at the Point of Care, "kill the clipboard", provider queries through CMS Aligned Networks — and nothing in either release is addressed to policymakers. A strict reading of "progress is measured on this ask" would hold this at `attempted` on the ground that what was delivered serves a different audience than the Quote names. `partial` is recorded because a shared real-time exchange that providers query is delivery of a piece of the ask, not of an adjacent one. Note also the contrary strand on the rulemaking side: ASTP/ONC withdrew the HTI-2 public health interoperability proposals on 2025-12-29 and proposed removing certification criteria the same day, so the executive built the ecosystem by pledge while deregulating the interoperability rules.

  2. Attempted

    At a White House event hosted with CMS, the Administration "secured commitments from major healthcare and information technology firms – including Amazon, Anthropic, Apple, Google, and OpenAI – to begin laying the foundation for a next-generation digital health ecosystem". More than 60 companies pledged to deliver in the first quarter of 2026; 21 networks pledged to meet the CMS Interoperability Framework criteria to become CMS Aligned Networks; eleven health systems and seven EHR vendors committed to participate. CMS named its own build-out — a FHIR-based National Provider Directory, Faster Blue Button Data and Data at the Point of Care — and the trail behind it, a joint CMS/ASTP request for information of May 2025 that drew nearly 1,400 comments and a public meeting on 2025-06-03. Commitments, not a system: §3's "a directive without effect yet". The Quote asks for a partnership with a data-management expert to build a real-time system, and this is the administration entering exactly that kind of arrangement, at scale, with named firms.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • How the release was finally located (2026-09-03). CMS’s press-release page and its newsroom search both refused to open — a nonsense control term got the same refusal as a real query, so the site was closed to us rather than quietly ignoring the search — and the CMS sitemap’s 145,208 URLs contain only 12 newsroom URLs. What works is paging through CMS’s newsroom article list, which shows every release with its date.
  • A third release, “Readout: CMS Celebrates Delivery of the Health Technology Ecosystem, One Year After Launch” (2026-08-03), and the initiative’s permanent home at cms.gov/initiatives/health-technology-ecosystem/overview, are leads: they were not opened, and a page we have not opened is not written as Evidence.
  • One search, run 2026-08-28, covered the p. 454 asks on CDC data, guidance and vaccine safety: this one, #1211, #1212, #1213 and #1215.
  • Regulatory agenda, checked 2026-09-01. Checked against the full HHS agenda on reginfo.gov (183 active RINs in the 2026 Unified Agenda, published 2026-08-14), not the abbreviated version the Federal Register prints. The nearest entry is recorded here; it does not name this ask’s object, so the Status is unchanged — an agenda entry that states a general goal in the ask’s subject area does not move the Status.
    • ASTP/ONC’s three entries — 0955-AA09 (Deregulatory Actions to Unleash Prosperity, NPRM published 2025-12-29, final action 08/2026), 0955-AA10 (Application Programming Interfaces and Information Blocking, NPRM 11/2026) and 0955-AA08 (Patient Engagement, Information Sharing, and Public Health Interoperability, final action 2025-12-29) — are health-IT certification and information-blocking rules. None is a public–private partnership with a data-management expert, and none builds a system putting critical information in front of health care workers and policymakers in real time.
Action
create
Object
real-time health data system
ID
1214