Inviting you to the FHIR connectathon

May 27, 2012

On Saturday September 8, we will be holding a FHIR connectathon in Baltimore, MD (USA) as a prelude to the next HL7 Working Group Meeting, where we’ll practice interoperability using FHIR. It’s still early in the development cycle, and no one’s going to be using FHIR for real clinical systems yet… but we already have full implementations of the specification. A connectathon will be a way to find out exactly whether FHIR is as easy and practical as we intend to be, and to learn how to make it even easier, if possible. Also, it’s our chance to start building an enthusiastic user community around FHIR.  We’re going to be testing implementations around RESTful use of Profile and person - servers, mobile clients, pub/sub using Atom (i.e. mashing up blogs and operational registries), and especially focused on a clinical template registry infrastructure. The exact details are still being clarified.

From an organization perspective, it looks like we’ll be able to call on some experienced IHE connectathon participants to run the day - more on that once it’s firmed up, and the FHIR technical leads will be present and testing our own implementations too.

The connectathon will be free - there’ll be no charge to attend. It’s a first time, and we’re just testing the notion. But because we need to plan the day, we’ll be asking people to commit in a couple of months time.

Why you should participate:

  • It’s a great way to get to know the community
  • FHIR is a much simpler and more robust specification than the alternatives
  • It will give you a leg up on getting to the market quicker than your competitors - and if FHIR delivers on it’s promise, there’s plenty of opportunity for creative destruction coming!
  • Turning up and testing real code at the connectathon will give you a much more effective voice in the development of FHIR (+ it looks likely that there’ll be a formal process where companies who participate in the connectathon get their own representation in FHIR Governance)
  • It’s free - this time.
  • Because connectathons are fun

If you’re interested, let me know at [email protected], or track this blog, where I’ll announce more news regarding the connectathon as it develops.