CONNECT event draws a range of coders
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Software developers from large and small companies, health networks, vendors, federal agencies, state agencies and universities had an opportunity to contribute to the CONNECT project—currently at version 2.4.1—through bug fixes, code improvements, enhanced documentation and other innovations, according to the FHA.
CONNECT Code-a-thons take place on a roughly quarterly basis, organizers said, and are intended to foster stakeholder interest in the open-source CONNECT tools for exchanging healthcare information. CONNECT is one of the foundation elements of the Nationwide Health Information Network.
The Miami event included presentations on the latest developments in the CONNECT code and the future of the open-source CONNECT architecture.
Discussions included using XMPP, the underlying protocol in many chat applications, in CONNECT web services and whether XMPP could be used as basis for simple push messaging of structured data. Participants also discussed how receiving data from EHR/EMR feeds and normalizing them to a common HL7-based flat model could help in development of rich user interface applications.
In addition, there was a conversation about encapsulating code into a library to reduce implementation overhead for vendors and allow them to pull in CONNECT functionality.
At the Code-a-thon Challenge, student developers teamed with professionals to take an example of the HL7 Continuity of Care Document (CCD), the “John Halamka CCD” published by the Health IT Standards Panel (HITSP), and create a user interface to display the CCD contents in one of three use cases: smartphones, netbooks and full-size PC displays.
A panel of judges, including clinical providers, drove the demonstrations via script and made judgments based on several criteria, including error-free demonstration, clear demonstration of added value, attractive UI, efficient use of the physician's time, and innovative data display capabilities.
Increasing participation and the Code-a-thon Challenge are “part of a phase change in the project, from being something that’s driven behind closed doors or driven to one agenda, to being something that’s expanded to be a collective agenda, participants show up and make a determined commitment to the project,” said Brian Behlendorf, CONNECT collaboration advisor. “This is a pattern well established by other open source [projects],” he said.
For more about CONNECT, click here. www.connectopensource.org.