Open Source HIE Software Upgraded

The Alembic Foundation, recently created to improve the federally funded CONNECT health information exchange software and release it to the open market, has completed its first major upgrade, now available for download.

The foundation copied the latest version of CONNECT, re-branded the software as Aurion 3.1, and started working on upgrades (see story). Now, multiple bugs have been fixed and additional functionality added in a new version, called Aurion 4.0.

The government's plan was that a private sector organization would eventually take control of the initiative. That didn't happen, so two former CONNECT staff members in the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology recently formed the Alembic Foundation to continue development work and promote Aurion.

The biggest enhancement in 4.0 is support for "multiple assigning authority" to better identify organizations and information systems participating in health information exchange. More information and a free download of Aurion 4.0 are available at aurionproject.org.