FHA Flexes Connectivity in HIMSS Demonstrations

The Federal Health Architecture (FHA) community showed its muscle here, demonstrating 23 different applications involving 60 organizations currently sharing health data using Nationwide Health Information Network standards and services.

The FHA was a part of an interoperability showcase set up at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society conference this week, which FHA program manager Vish Sankaran said was evidence of the arrival of "a new era of collaboration and innovation."

Sankaran said the interoperability applications were the byproduct of a "year of heavy lifting" by the FHA and its sate and local partners in setting up health information exchange using Connect, a set of tools and policies started by the FHA for sharing health data securely over the Internet.

The current year will be noted for NHIN-level health data sharing across private and public organizations, large and small, he predicted.