Programmers to swarm NHIN code in D.C. meet-up

This Thursday, about 80 programmers will descend on a large conference room at Health and Human Services Department headquarters in Washington, D.C., to pool their talents in an extended four-hour health IT “code-a-thon.”

Their mission: to repair software bugs, test routines and hatch applications to improve the “Connect” gateway, a software suite developed by federal agencies to enable health information sharing via the emerging Nationwide Health Information Network.

Code-a-thons are common among open source communities, letting programmers meet face-to-face to collaborate on high priority goals, according to Fred Trotter, an open source consultant and advocate for Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in healthcare. The events let developers partner in person – sometimes for the first time – as they often work in different cities or continents.

Connect is unusual because it is an open source healthcare project run by the federal government, and that itself will make the outcome very interesting, he said.

“This is a very positive sign because it represents the Connect program recognizing and embracing the good work that was going on in the open source healthcare community before they came along,” Trotter said in an email.

Trotter noted that the code-a-thon will incorporate in its goals the experience of existing open source projects, such as work on Connect done by the Mirth Corp., a healthcare application developer, to write interoperability software for healthcare.

At the code-a-thon, programmers and developers will attack Connect’s code on a number of levels to improve adapters, tighten security controls and tweak development tools.

According to the Connect web site, the coders will also look to improve automated installation and set up of infrastructure, demonstrate validation of messaging in advanced electronic formats and test gaps in coverage. There will be a discussion of new features and services available through Connect, including source code control and bug and issue tracking to help generate a development roadmap.    

More than 20 federal agencies, working together through the Office of the National Coordinator's Federal Health Architecture office, helped to develop the Connect software, which lets agencies as well as private sector health organizations exchange health records securely through the protocols and services of the NHIN. In April, HHS released a version of the Connect software to the open source community.

Aneesh Chopra, White House chief technology officer and an advocate of open-source collaboration and development, said he hoped the code-a-thon would build support and more features for the Connect software in the private sector.

“I am cautiously optimistic that our Connect initiative, whose primary focus is to support federal agency connectivity in an open and collaborative format, will be well received and adopted by the private sector,” he said after a recent health IT forum.

Brian Behlendorf, an open source advocate, is leading the code-a-thon for the Connect program. Behlendorf, who has been a contractor on the administration’s Open Government initiative team headed by Chopra, has been advising the Connect program temporarily to help define an open source strategy for its future development.