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New Features Planned for CONNECT 3.3
January 12, 2012,
Posted by ieckerman
in General.

By Greg Turner

CONNECT Development Team

The new year has arrived, and with the release of the next major version of CONNECT just around the corner in March, the development team is working hard preparing for the roll out of version 3.3. To better meet the needs of the federal partners involved in the CONNECT project and to address the needs of the CONNECT community at large, the latest version of the software will incorporate new strategic features, performance improvements, maintenance fixes and software updates.

Some of the enhancements planned for this release include:

  • Complying with July 2011 approved Nationwide Health Information Network specifications: In July 2011, the Nationwide Health Information Network coordinating committee approved updated versions of the specifications supporting interoperability. CONNECT 3.3 will deliver functionality to support these updates for services like patient...
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CONNECT Code-A-Thon Travels to the West Coast in December
December 1, 2011,
Posted by ieckerman
in General.

Code-A-ThonThe CONNECT team will host its sixth CONNECT Code-A-Thon Dec. 15-16 at the University of California, Berkeley.

In addition to the traditional coding and technical sessions, this event will also feature a first-ever business track as well. The business track, feature sessions such as CONNECT 101 and one on building the business case for CONNECT, is meant to provide CONNECT newcomers will basic information about the open source software project as well as the ways it can benefit them.

FHA Director Lauren Thompson will kick off the Code-a-Thon with a keynote address beginning at 9 a.m. on Thursday. A panel discussion will kick off day two at 9 a.m. and will address lessons learned when organizations implement CONNECT.

...

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National Health IT Week
September 14, 2011,
Posted by ieckerman
in General.

By Lauren Thompson, Director, Federal Health Architecture

In his presidential proclamation issued Sept. 12, President Obama named September 11-17 as National Health IT Week. In the proclamation, the President stated, “During National Health Information Technology Week, we highlight the critical importance of secure and efficient information systems to improving the delivery of health care in the United States.”

I wanted to take this opportunity to celebrate the great strides being made throughout the country to bring medical records into the digital age. Though it won’t happen overnight, we’re making steady progress toward getting care providers throughout the country to use electronic health records, and in parallel, we’re overcoming the barriers...

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CONNECT 3.2.1 is Now Available for Download!
September 2, 2011,
Posted by ieckerman
in General.

The CONNECT team is pleased to release version 3.2.1 today, which is now available for download.  This release is essentially a bug release, with a more comprehensive release, CONNECT 3.3, scheduled for this winter.

Examples of fixes built into 3.2.1 include:

  • Correlating Multiple Responses for Patient Discovery: In previous versions of CONNECT, if a patient discovery query returned multiple matches from a Master Patient Index (due to multiple assigning authority matching), the system only created a correlation for the first match returned. Now CONNECT can correlate all responses.
  • Deferred Patient Discover Requests Make Policy Checks Inside the Gateway: The newest version of CONNECT now makes policy checks within the gateway as well as at the...
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The CONNECT Community Wraps Up a Successful Code-A-Thon at Johns Hopkins University
August 12, 2011,
Posted by ieckerman
in General.

The CONNECT team hosted a record number of participants at the fifth CONNECT Code-a-Thon, held Aug. 9-10 at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. The program wants to thank Johns Hopkins and the Department of Defense’s Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC) for providing the facility to host the CONNECT Community.

The new director of the Federal Health Architecture, Dr. Lauren Thompson, kicked off the event with opening remarks Tuesday morning, and was followed by a number of plenary sessions that included presentations from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the National Disaster Medical System and the Social Security Administration about the needs of the federal community and its partners related to CONNECT and health IT interoperability.

Breakout sessions rounded out the agenda, providing newcomers with a chance to learn the basics about CONNECT, and veteran attendees had the opportunity to discuss...

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