ONC to Host CONNECT Open Source Seminar

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) has announced the agenda for the June 29-30 open source CONNECT Seminar '09 in Washington D.C.

CONNECT is an on-ramp to the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN), a network of networks for health information exchanges, providers, payers, and other stakeholders enabling standards-based connectivity and information sharing.

CONNECT is an open source connectivity solution built for use by 20 federal agencies to securely link their systems to the NHIN. Earlier this year, CONNECT was released to the public including:

• The NHIN Gateway is used to locate patients at other health organizations within the NHIN, request and receive documents associated with the patient, create audit logs of these transactions, authenticate network participants, formulate and evaluate authorizations for the release of medical information, and honor consumer preferences for sharing their information.

• The Enterprise Service Component includes a Master Patient Index (MPI), Document Registry and Repository, Authorization Policy Engine, Consumer Preferences Manager, HIPAA-compliant Audit Log and a software development kit for developing adapters to plug in existing systems such as electronic health record solutions to support the secure exchange of health information across the NHIN.
  

• The Universal Client Framework is used to develop applications using the Enterprise Service Component.
  

Speakers at the CONNECT Seminar '09 include keynoters ONC head David Blumenthal and CTO Aneesh Chopra, with business and technical tracks delivered by experts on the CONNECT system.