Role in the NHIN

Federal agencies began the development of CONNECT to accelerate participation in the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN). The CONNECT Gateway layer is the reference implementation for the NHIN, meaning that it is constructed to implement the standards and requirements outlined for the NHIN.

Though CONNECT can be used in all types of health information exchanges, by incorporating NHIN requirements, any exchange built using CONNECT can potentially be upgraded over time in order to participate in NHIN-compliant exchanges.

Due to its close relationship with the NHIN, the CONNECT team actively participates in NHIN work groups and is helping define and write NHIN specifications.

This approach – developing standards and a production-quality reference implementation at the same time in an open, transparent process – is inspired by the development approach of much of the underlying infrastructure of the Internet.