I Wonder Is There Something Here That Might Be Useful to Australia?

I noticed this the other day.

HHS Connect sets standards for sharing medical information

Open-source system lets health care organizations exchange records securely and efficiently

• By Edmund X. DeJesus
• Oct 15, 2010

Until recently, there wasn’t an easy way for federal agencies to securely and efficiently exchange health care information with one another or other organizations.

But a standards-based, open-source approach orchestrated by the Health and Human Services Department's Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT promises to do just that via the Connect program.

The Connect program supplies free software that government agencies and private-sector health care providers can use to exchange patient information.

…..

To overcome the obstacles to sharing medical information, the Federal Health Architecture at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT began developing the Connect program in 2007.

“The goal of Connect was not simply to define standards for exchanging medical information but to create the actual software necessary for federal agencies to start sharing that information securely and efficiently,” said Dr. Douglas Fridsma. Fridsma is director of ONC's Office of Interoperability and Standards and interim director of FHA and Connect.

The Connect program is an unprecedented collaboration that combines the efforts of more than 20 federal agencies to create a single platform for exchanging health information. The aim is save each federal agency the time, cost and resources needed to create a compliant system by fielding a single system that all agencies could immediately implement. Using a single system also eliminates the necessity of integrating different systems and testing them separately.

…..

It consists of three primary components.

• The Core Services Gateway enables health care organizations to locate their patients within other organizations. They can then request and securely receive pertinent documents for those patients.
• The Enterprise Service Component includes default implementations of many essential components necessary for exchanging electronic health information.
• The Universal Client Framework consists of a set of applications that organizations can adapt to create an edge system. Those applications can also serve as a reference system for testing or demonstration.

Full article here:

http://gcn.com/articles/2010/10/18/gcn-award-hhs-connect.aspx

It seems to me we should be having a close look at what has been developed here, as having been implemented in a number of locations, this is actually working software that just might be useful and which I believe can be freely accessed.

Just a thought!

David.