At a recent “Make HealthTech Great Again” event, the White House and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced the launch of a digital health technology ecosystem in partnership with private sector healthcare and tech leaders: the HealthTech Initiative. The stated goal: empower patients and reduce provider burden through the creation of a standardized health data exchange. A list of the businesses that have pledged support for the HealthTech Initiative to date is available on the CMS website here; these “early adopters” have committed to meet and showcase their outcomes in the first quarter of 2026.
How Will the HealthTech Initiative Change Healthcare in America?
A hallmark of the HealthTech Initiative is the CMS Interoperability Framework, which enables patient health data to be shared across a patient’s healthcare providers, governed by voluntary criteria (the Framework). The criteria of the Framework include:
- Patient access and empowerment;
- Provider access and delegation;
- Data availability and standards compliance;
- Data availability and standards compliance; network connectivity and transparency; and
- Identity, security and trust.
In practice, this means that any patient who voluntarily enrolls in the HealthTech Initiative could permit, for example, a sleep tracker wearables provider or weight loss app to access their medical history — facilitating a more integrated and personalized approach to care.
Another key feature of the HealthTech Initiative is the introduction of personalized digital tools for patients to access health information resources. Through an app library on Medicare.gov, patients will have access to resources for managing diabetes and obesity, as well as conversational AI assistants that can help patients to, among other things, check symptoms and schedule medical appointments. These tools will draw on medical records from CMS-Aligned Networks, which are networks that self-attest to meeting the voluntary criteria of the Framework, through secure digital identity credentials.
How Did Stakeholder Feedback Shape the HealthTech Initiative?
The White House announcement follows a May 2025 request for information (RFI) jointly issued by the CMS and the Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy / Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ASTP / ONC). The RFI, which focused on empowering Medicare beneficiaries, boosting data interoperability and building HealthTech infrastructure, drew about 1,400 comments from stakeholders such as patients, caregivers, providers and tech developers and helped inform the HealthTech Initiative.
The HealthTech Initiative was also announced against a backdrop of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s broader push to center technology in American healthcare, notably via wearables. See our recent insight on the regulatory landscape of wearables.
What Role Do Privacy and Security Play in the CMS Vision?
The HealthTech Initiative, as designed, has the potential to transform digital health for Americans but privacy and security considerations will require ongoing attention to balance demand for patient convenience with expectations of privacy as the initiative evolves.
The increased exchange of health data across CMS-Aligned Networks expands the potential surface area for unauthorized access. To be sure, the Framework’s Identity, Security & Trust criterion sets out important security requirements such as HITRUST certification (or an equivalent approved by CMS) and verifiable logs or audit records for identity and authentication requests. While these are positive security markers, ongoing monitoring and coordinated security standards will be essential to maintain patient trust, as multiple industry players gain technical access to sensitive patient information.
Although patients must opt in to the HealthTech Initiative to share their health data, patient trust will also depend on meaningful consent mechanisms and clear controls over which third parties can access and share information. While the Framework does not override HIPAA or U.S. state privacy laws, the HealthTech Initiative will channel sensitive patient information beyond the highly regulated HIPAA environment and introduce an additional layer of compliance for participating entities, requiring careful coordination.
Currently, the HealthTech Initiative lacks a formal enforcement mechanism. As a result, the privacy and security of health data within the network will depend on the follow-through of participating entities, rather than on regulatory mandates. As the HealthTech Initiative takes shape and redefines digital health in the U.S., its success will depend not only on technological innovation and industry partnerships, but also on the shared commitment of all participating entities to uphold strong privacy and security standards.
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