The Obama administration is
committed to overhauling government spending on technology by adopting open source solutions, and
healthcare professionals are increasingly heeding the call of open source. This week brings an important step in empowering healthcare IT organizations to tie into the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN), a federal initiative to facilitate the electronic exchange of health information. The open source inititiative is
called Connect. It consists of open source software and accompanying documentation,
available here.
As Matt Asay notes, the goal is to reduce the cost and complexity of tying into the U.S. national health information network, with three of the largest federal healthcare provider organizations, Defense and Veterans Affairs departments plus the Indian Health Service, each participating in Connect.
