Connecting Arizona's health data — one standard at a time.
AzHeC is a neutral, vendor-neutral statewide authority on health interoperability. We translate the standards behind connected care — HL7, FHIR, GS1, UDI and EPCS — into plain-language guidance Arizona's health stakeholders can actually use.
The council's four work areas
Our work covers the full path that clinical data travels — from the exchange that moves it, to the standards that make it trustworthy, to the devices and supplies it ultimately describes.
The Network
Arizona's statewide health information exchange — the connective tissue moving clinical data between hospitals, clinics, labs and pharmacies.
Read moreStandards
The interoperability rules that make exchange trustworthy: HL7 and FHIR, Unique Device Identification (UDI), GS1, and privacy/security under HIPAA.
Read moreConnected Devices
How monitors, pumps, wearables and remote-monitoring kits feed data into the record and the HIE — and the standards that make that work.
Read morePharmacy & Supply
From electronic prescribing to the pharmaceutical supply chain — closing the loop between what is ordered, dispensed and stocked.
Read moreNew to interoperability? Begin with the standards.
Almost every interoperability question eventually comes back to two standards from Health Level Seven (HL7): the long-established HL7 v2 messaging format, still the most widely deployed health-IT standard in the world, and FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources), the modern, web-based API standard now built into US regulation.
Our plain-language primer explains what each one is, where it is used today, and why the two work together rather than one replacing the other. It is the best place to start if you want the rest of this site to make sense.
A neutral table, by design
AzHeC carries the civic legacy of Arizona Health-e Connection — the statewide coalition formed in the mid-2000s to chart the state's first Health IT Roadmap and operate its statewide HIE, "The Network." We continue that convening role: bringing providers, payers, labs, pharmacies, vendors and state agencies to the same neutral table.
We take no vendor money and recommend no products. Every position we publish starts from a named, published standard — not a sales pitch — so stakeholders can trust the guidance regardless of which systems they run.
Bring a question to the council
Whether you represent a hospital, a clinic, a lab, a pharmacy, a payer or a state agency, we are glad to talk interoperability. Reach out for a general enquiry, council participation, or press.