# Member education materials template

If you’re a 1upHealth customer and you need to include language on your website or application for your customers about your interoperability solution, you can modify and use the below template.

This information should not be considered legal advice. Make sure to have your compliance team review the sample language to verify that it meets your requirements.

Some of the following sample language includes placeholder text in `{curly brackets}`. Make sure to replace the placeholder text.

> ## Patient Access API
If you use a mobile app or computer program to help you monitor your personal health goals, that app or program will request access to your health information. To provide a method for you to download or share your health information with apps and programs, we partner with 1upHealth for our interoperability solution. Interoperability is the process of enabling your health information to move seamlessly between our programs and the programs you select.
For more information about how interoperability functions and our responsibilities to meet your health data sharing needs, you can review the following information.
### The 21st Century Cures Act and the CMS Patient Access API
In December 2016, a bill named the 21st Century Cures Act was signed into law, with several important goals, including improved interoperability between health information systems, and increased patient access to their own health data. This law also empowered the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to create regulations to further this goal, which it did with the creation of the CMS Interoperability and Patient Access final rule (CMS-9115-F). To increase patients' access to their health data, the rule prohibits information blocking and requires health insurance plans to give members access and the ability to share their health plan data with third-party applications of their choice using an API endpoint. The deadline for health plans to comply with this mandate is July 1st, 2021.
### What This Means for You and Your Health Plan
This set of regulations means that your health plan must make available all of your claims and clinical data contained in their systems using an API endpoint, which allows you to share your data with third-party applications of your choosing. Your health plan has contracted with 1upHealth, an industry leader in health care data integrations, and a cutting-edge data standard named FHIR, to give you access to your data and the ability to share it. When you want to integrate your healthcare data with third-party applications, such as MyChart, Apple Health, or FitBit, you can connect through these applications to the 1upHealth platform, where you confirm your identity to 1upHealth and your health plan by answering a few demographic questions and providing the email address that’s on file for you with your health plan. After your identity is authenticated, your health plan shares your health care data with the third-party application you have chosen, through the 1upHealth platform.
### Benefits and Risks of Sharing Data
There are many benefits to this new ability to access and share your data. You can review the [1upHealth Third-Party Applications page](/docs/get-started/third-party-apps), for a list of the third-party applications that you can use to get this information. Some apps allow you to aggregate your data from multiple health systems to create a complete record of your interactions with different doctors and hospitals, and combine it with the data that you generate on your own from wearable devices, such as glucose meters, pedometers, or heart rate monitors. Some other common uses include prescription drug management, chronic disease management, nutrition tracking, and care coordination. Data sharing empowers you to have greater ownership of and visibility into your health data, and has the potential to improve both your health and the quality of care you receive from the health care system.
As with any interaction over the internet, these benefits are not without some level of risk. Your health plan takes your privacy and the security of your health information as seriously as you do. That's why your data is never shared without your permission. Your health plan safeguards your data throughout the process of sharing it in several ways, including using challenge questions and multi-factor authentication to confirm you—and no one else—can access and share your data.
It’s important to understand that after your data is shared with a third-party application, your health plan is no longer responsible for the security of that data. That’s why it’s important to read the privacy and security policies for any application before you choose to share your data with it, to make sure that you understand how it is protected and used by that application.
### How to Report Identity Theft and Fraud
If you believe an application that you've shared your data with is misusing that information in violation of their stated privacy policy, contact the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the matter at ReportFraud.ftc.gov or (877)-382-4357.
If you believe the privacy of your health care data has been violated, contact the federal Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights at www.hhs.gov/ocr/complaints.
## App Developer Resources
Developers can use 1upHealth APIs to create applications that interact with `{CUSTOMER}`’s electronic health data—including clinical and claims data—using the FHIR standard. 1upHealth provides a common RESTful API with access to 10,000+ health centers within their growing network.
1upHealth's API fully supports FHIR® and provides rich programmatic access to electronic medical record data for patients and the companies and institutions who serve them. The available data includes patient demographics, labs, medications, observations, procedures, allergies, and much more.
The 1upHealth platform is HIPAA compliant and is used by some of the largest hospital systems. Review 1upHealth's [Info for third-party developers](/docs/patient-access/dev-implementation) for more information.