CMS marked the first anniversary of its Health Tech Ecosystem on July 28, 2026, and used the moment to add eight new pledge categories. Amy Gleason, who leads the initiative within CMS, stood as the public face of the anniversary push at the Department of Health and Human Services headquarters.
The new categories are meant to widen the framework for data interoperability across EHR systems, health app developers, payers, data networks, and providers. That shifts the program from a simple pledge campaign toward a more structured set of choices for companies deciding whether to line up around shared data-access standards.
Amy Gleason at HHS headquarters
The anniversary event included a coffin labeled RIP CLIPBOARD onstage at Health and Human Services headquarters. CMS has also published a Pledge Demo Showcase, a sign that the agency wants the interoperability effort to look less like a slogan and more like a working rollout with visible examples.
That showmanship sat next to a harder message. CMS described the Health Tech Ecosystem as a movement, not a mandate, but it is still asking major parts of the healthcare stack to voluntarily align around shared standards for access and interoperability.
Voluntary rules, real pressure
CMS said the framework is not intended to supersede or preempt existing federal or state healthcare privacy laws, including HIPAA and the Privacy Act of 1974. It also said it is building a National Provider Directory and modern identity capabilities on Medicare.gov, which gives the ecosystem a technical backbone instead of relying only on public pledges.
The original launch took place at a White House event in 2025 under the banner Make Health Tech Great Again. The anniversary therefore reads less like a reset than an attempt to keep the same interoperability coalition moving after its first year.
Eight pledge categories, no list
CMS has not spelled out the eight new pledge categories in the material provided here, so the practical reading for providers and vendors is narrower than the headline suggests: the framework widened, but the scope of each category is still something they have to evaluate against their own systems. That matters for anyone deciding whether to join early, because early alignment can become the practical baseline later even when a program starts as voluntary.
For companies that already handle patient data, the immediate question is not whether CMS can force adoption. It is whether the new categories create enough momentum that shared standards become the default way to stay inside the ecosystem. For readers watching implementation, the open question is what exactly the eight new pledge categories cover.
