2019 Glaser Society Proceedings Go International with FHIR Community Titan, Grahame Grieve

In its fourth year, the UTHealth School of Biomedical Informatics (SBMI) Glaser Society accorded the 2019 John P. Glaser Health Informatics Innovator Award to Australian, Grahame Grieve—Founder of HL7 FHIR and FHIR Product Director at HL7 International—in recognition of his longstanding work within the global FHIR community.

FHIR (Fast Health Interoperability Resources), the leading healthcare data exchange standard of the future, was developed by the health care IT standards body known as HL7 (Health Level Seven). HL7 International is a not-for-profit, ANSI-accredited standards developing organization dedicated to providing a comprehensive framework and related standards for the exchange, integration, sharing, and retrieval of electronic health information.

On October 18, 2019, the annual Glaser Society Proceedings were held at the UTHealth IMM Building in Houston, Texas, where Grahame Grieve was acknowledged by a number of his international FHIR community colleagues with tribute videos from CSIRO and the HL7 Community in Australia (masterminded by Mark Braunstein and David Hansen), the HL7 Community in The Netherlands (kudos to Rien Wertheim and Rene Spronk), and the HL7 Community in Norway (special thanks to Line Andreassen Saele). Subsequently, Grahame Grieve was formally inducted into the Glaser Society by its Founding Member, John P. Glaser, PhD, and SBMI Dean, Jiajie Zhang, PhD. Grieve then delivered a lecture to more than 100 guests entitled FHIR: The Power of Standards to Change Health Outcomes, after which all attendees were invited to a reception in his honor.

In keeping with his modesty as a leader, Grahame Grieve credited his FHIR community colleagues, rather than himself, for the advancement of this cause: “It is not my effort, but the determination and hard work of so many others across the world, who have made our progress possible. I am accepting the Glaser Innovator Award on their behalf—it is recognition for their work, not mine—and I am very proud that we have been acknowledged by the Glaser Society for what we, the FHIR community, have accomplished together. There is still a great deal more to be done and we are very grateful for the wonderful expression of support represented by the Glaser Award.”

Dr. John Glaser remarked, “Grahame Grieve is a true visionary. His farsightedness, determination, and ability to marshal international intellectual capital focused on interoperability are reshaping healthcare in ways that are still being imagined. His work, and that of so many contributors to this effort, will revolutionize patient care—at the individual and population levels.”

“The challenges of sharing data are very real and often involve stakeholders with complex, conflicting agendas. We all know that interoperability is an ongoing process—and, over more than a decade, Grahame Grieve has leveraged his strategic leadership positions to achieve convergence among U.S., international, and European standards organizations. As we’re all aware, this is no small triumph,” affirmed SBMI’s Dean, Dr. Jiajie Zhang.

Notable guests attending the 2019 Glaser Society Proceedings included UTHealth leadership, faculty, physicians, and students; Texas Medical Center representatives, and Houston community leaders—as well as prominent local, national, and international guests, among them: John P. Glaser, Executive Senior Advisor, Cerner Corporation; Peter McGauran, Australian Consul-General and Senior Trade and Investment Commissioner to Houston, Texas; Ricky Bloomfield, Clinical and Health Informatics Lead, Apple; Steve Wretling, Chief Technology & Innovation Officer, HIMSS (National Office); Mark Anderson, Houston Chapter President, HIMSS; Chuck Jaffe, CEO, Health Level 7; Nick Bonvino, CEO, Greater Houston HealthConnect; Paula Braun, Data Science Entrepreneur in Residence, CDC; David Hansen, CEO, Australian e-Health Research Centre, CSIRO Health & Biosecurity; Wayne Kubick, Chief Technology Officer, HL7 International; Lawrence Lynn, President, Lyntek Medical Technologies; Lloyd McKenzie, Consultant, ONC (US and Canada) & Senior Consultant, IT Services, Gevity Consulting Inc.; Viet Nguyen, Technical Director, HL7 Da Vinci Project & Founder, Stratametrics; Bryn Rhodes, Principal, Dynamic Content Group; Michael Shabot, Founding Partner, Relia Healthcare Advisors; Henry W. Jones, III, IT Consultant and Houston HIMSS Board Member; Dan Vreeman, Senior Clinical Data Standards Lead, RTI International; and many others.

To view the 2019 Glaser Society Proceedings, inclusive of the opening comments by Dean Jiajie Zhang and John Glaser, the tribute videos honoring Grahame Grieve, the Glaser Society induction ceremony, and the lecture by Grahame Grieve, please go to: https://youtu.be/OYd5Zrqnjes. (Note that, for the first tribute video, the music originally complementing the piece has not been retained; all other audio for the 2019 Glaser Society Proceedings has been preserved.)

More information on the John P. Glaser Health Informatics Society may be found at: https://sbmi.uth.edu/glaser-society/about.

published on 11/13/2019 at 10:15 a.m.