Healthcare industry veteran joins leadership team in fractional capacity to drive innovation in trusted data exchange driven by standards development
WASHINGTON, DC / ACCESS Newswire / February 27, 2025 / DirectTrust®, a non-profit healthcare industry alliance focused on scaling trust in healthcare technology and data exchange through standards, accreditation, and other services, today announced the appointment of Lisa R. Nelson MS, MBA as Chief Technical Officer (CTO), effective April 1, 2025. Nelson, a highly respected medical informaticist and innovator, brings over 25 years of experience in advancing interoperability, patient-centered data exchange, and health information technology standards development to her new role.
"We are thrilled to welcome Lisa to the DirectTrust executive team as CTO," said Scott Stuewe, President and CEO, DirectTrust. "Her deep understanding of interoperability standards will be instrumental in strengthening DirectTrust's role in shaping the future of trusted health information exchange, particularly in the areas of Direct Secure Messaging, the DirectTrust Aggregated Directory, and emerging standards related to the different types of content a Direct Secure Message can carry."
Nelson, who is concluding her tenure as a DirectTrust Board member, joins the alliance from ADVault, Inc., where she served as Senior Vice President of Enterprise Integrations for MyDirectives, Inc., leading efforts to enhance advance care planning interoperability within the broader health IT ecosystem.
With a distinguished career in health IT standards development, she has played a pivotal role in shaping national standards for digital health information, particularly through her contributions to Health Level Seven® (HL7®) International Clinical Document Architecture (CDA®), co-authoring standards for patient-generated documents, authoring the 2019 C-CDA Companion Guide, and leading initiatives like the CDA Implementation-A-Thons to support industry adoption. Beyond CDA, Nelson has been deeply involved in HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR®) development, serving as Technical Director for the Gravity HL7 FHIR Accelerator Project, which develops consensus-driven standards for social determinants of health (SDOH) information. She's contributed to multiple FHIR implementation guides, actively participates in FHIR Connectathons, as well as leads training programs. Her leadership extends to serving as Founder and Co-Chair of the HL7 CDA Management Group and involvement in other HL7 workgroups, the Sequoia Project Data Usability Task Force, and chairing and participating in several DirectTrust Consensus Bodies, all which drive efforts to improve data usability, patient access, and interoperability.
Nelson's commitment to improving interoperability and patient access to health information aligns with DirectTrust's mission of enabling secure, standards-based data exchange. As fractional CTO, she will leverage her expertise to guide DirectTrust's technical strategy, ensuring its trust framework, relevant accreditation programs, and standards initiatives, especially related to Direct Secure Messaging and FHIR, evolve to support clinicians, patients, healthcare organizations, and technology vendors.
"I've been a true believer in the power and potential of Direct Secure Messaging since its inception over two decades ago," said Nelson. "Now, I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to join this dynamic leadership team to collaborate more broadly across multiple initiatives at DirectTrust, and to work in partnership with the other standards development organizations making interoperability and trusted, secure exchange successful at scale within our entire health IT ecosystem."
For more information about DirectTrust and its initiatives, visit DirectTrust.org.
About DirectTrust®
DirectTrust® is a non-profit, vendor-neutral alliance dedicated to establishing trust in a connected world. The organization serves as a forum for a consensus-driven community focused on health communication and cybersecurity, an ANSI standards development organization, an accreditation and certification body governed by EHNAC, and a developer of technical trust frameworks and supportive services for secure information exchange like Direct Secure Messaging and identity-verified credentials.
The goal of DirectTrust is to develop, promote, and, as necessary, help enforce the rules and best practices necessary to maintain privacy, security, and trust for stakeholders across and beyond healthcare. In addition, DirectTrust is committed to fostering widespread public confidence in the interoperable exchange of health information while promoting quality service, innovation, cooperation, and open competition in healthcare. To learn more, visit: DirectTrust.org.
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Press contact:
Tom Testa
Anderson Interactive
tom@andersoni.com
SOURCE: DirectTrust
View the original press release on ACCESS Newswire
