Elkridge-based NewWave Telecom and Technologies Inc., announced the launch of Onyx Technology, a subsidiary focused on providing health plans with the products and services needed to support health care data interoperability in the emergent era of Fast Healthcare Interoperable Resources (FHIR) standards.

“NewWave has supported the CMS mission to deliver the Blue Button 2.0 API that provides health information access to 53 million Medicare beneficiaries,” said Patrick Munis, founder and CEO of NewWave. “With the new CMS and ONC data sharing rules, every health plan will have to make their data interoperable. We took our deep competencies with FHIR and data sharing and created Onyx, solely dedicated to providing customers interoperable systems that meet the federal mandates and the demands of future information sharing. We are very excited to be leaders of this transformational change.”

Onyx is bringing to market SAFHIR, a cloud-first platform built to meet the demands of the health plans. This platform enables secure connections between payers and patients and is the product of the lessons learned by NewWave from building the Blue Button 2.0 service for Medicare.

Onyx will be led by veteran CEO Susheel Ladwa. Ladwa previously led IBM’s Healthcare and Life Science cloud application innovation business among other healthcare innovation executive roles. He is a contributing member of LeadingAge’s Center for Aging Services Technology (CAST) and chairs the American Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) IT Working Group.

“Onyx will be a forerunner in changing how the American health care system uses data,” said Ladwa. “The pandemic has only increased the urgency of our mission. We are here at the beginning of this significant change.”