Overview
- athenahealth and b.well Connected Health introduced a workflow that lets patients share their health information digitally during intake, without paper forms, faxes or multiple portal logins.
- Patients collect records into a single view in b.well-powered apps, choose what to share, and present it with a QR code.
- Practice staff scan the code to retrieve the authorized data and add it to the chart in athenaOne.
- The companies expect a broader rollout in 2026.
The News
athenahealth and b.well announced the workflow in February 2026. It supports the CMS Health Tech Ecosystem Initiative goal of replacing manual intake and fragmented data exchange with patient-directed tools, an effort known as Kill the Clipboard.
The capability runs in athenaOne, athenahealth’s AI-native, cloud-based platform that combines EHR, revenue cycle management and patient engagement tools. Sam Lambson, athenahealth vice president of data and ecosystem platform, said health data should follow the patient, not the other way around.
Industry Perspective
Patient-mediated data exchange has been promised for years but often stalls on usability and provider workflow. Federal pressure through CMS’s ecosystem pledges is pushing EHR vendors and consumer data platforms to make it practical at the front desk.
Strategic Impact
For athenahealth, the workflow gives ambulatory practices a concrete way to meet interoperability goals. For b.well, embedding in a large EHR network could drive consumer app adoption, though success will depend on how many patients actually aggregate their records before visits.
Source: Businesswire
