MobileMD Set to Test CONNECT Software for Move to NHIN
By Greg Brock, CTO at MobileMD The Nationwide Health Information Network, or NHIN, has taken some time to become a reality. It's been five years since an executive order from former President George W. Bush came down encouraging a broader, more far-reaching use of health information technology.
Yet, an important step was taken in 2008 when federal agencies, through the Federal Health Architecture program, decided to develop an open source software program to facilitate the interconnection of health IT systems across the country.
Known as CONNECT, this open source solution is seen as an accelerant to promote NHIN adoption and connectivity. CONNECT is intended to provide a reference implementation of the NHIN specifications and give health organizations, intending to implement NHIN connectivity, a defined platform to integrate with or simply test connectivity against.
A milestone was reached this year when CONNECT was made available to the healthcare industry at large. Understanding that, ultimately, NHIN connectivity will be critical to a health systems HIE feature set, MobileMD has made it a priority to understand the NHIN and CONNECT initiatives and include these in our MobileMD HIE product roadmap.
This summer, our senior staff attended the Connect Seminar in Washington, DC. This seminar provided a broad overview of the CONNECT initiative along with specific details of the 2.1 release of the software (v2.2 has just been released). This fall (Q4 of 2009) we will be integrating with and testing CONNECT in our software lab. We will see first-hand how it functions, how it fits with the MobileMD architecture and when appropriate, provide feedback to the CONNECT team. It is our goal that, as NHIN adoption becomes a must for health systems, we provide our MobileMD HIE customers with a CONNECT-ready product suite.
When it is put into practice, the NHIN has great promise of being that anytime, anywhere health information highway we've all been looking for. Yes, for a while, adoption and use will be tempered, but this is common with many new technologies. Think of online banking. Ten years ago it was a feature provided by the most progressive banks and used by only the savviest of customers.
Today your grandparents are apt to use it, and financial institutions not providing the service are few. Can you imagine not having online bill pay?
Just like many new technology initiatives, many will have a wait and see approach, but eventually, the efficiency and effectiveness of communicating outside one's health network to improve patient care will be too powerful to resist.
Greg Brock
Greg Brock
CTO, MobileMD