So far, about 180 federal officials and representatives from a host of private organizations have registered to convene on the campus of Portland (Ore.) State University later this week for a two-day
Code-A-Thon to enhance the code base of Connect, the open-source gateway to the proposed national health information network.
Co-hosts for the gathering, which begins Thursday, are Portland State University and Oregon State University.
Code for the Connect gateway software was released in March by the Federal Health Architecture initiative led by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology at HHS.
Space is limited to 200 attendees. For those who can't make it to Portland, organizers have scheduled a
two-hour webinar beginning at 1 p.m. PT on Friday.
The public forum will focus on “opportunities to engage graduate students and their faculty into the NHIN Connect open-source community,” and how the Connect universal client platform can be used to create clinical applications, according to an agenda posted online.
Skip McGaughey, a founder and the executive director of
Open Health Tools, is scheduled to attend the Connect session.
McGaughey said Connect “is probably one of the most significant things to happen to healthcare. It truly has the potential to have a very, very significant impact on people and their health information.”
