The Health & Human Services Department has updated the government's Connect software to incorporate the ability to query for a patient and to assure the identity of sender and recipient in the exchange of health data.
Connect is the federally developed software that lets agencies and healthcare organizations share health data by using the protocols, agreements and core services that comprise the nationwide health information network (NHIN).
HHS continues to improve or add more functionality to the Connect gateway software on a quarterly basis to be a model for health information exchange, according to Les Westberg, Connect's technical lead in the Federal Health Architecture (FHA) program and an executive with Agilex.
Authentication requirements "should be in line with some of the tightest security that's possible right now," he said, during an online conference Jan. 19 about the latest version of Connect software.
Authentication works hand-in-hand with the data use and reciprocal agreement (DURSA), which is a legal agreement signed by the organizations to assure a certain level of authentication, he said. The organizations communicate that authentication information with use of Security Assertion Mark-up Language (SAML), a standard for exchanging authentication and authorization data.
NHIN authentication services will include digital certificates to document a user's identity has been verified, lists of those whose certification has been revoked and the ability to ask if an organization's NHIN certification is still valid, Westberg said.
Another significant upgrade is the technical ability for Connect to be able to query if a patient is known to an exchange user. Some demographic data can accompany the query. That replaced a general notification that the system was looking for the subject, he said.
Connect also introduced a set of responses when a patient is discovered. The gateway can pass through the results of the discovery to the adapter, the interface between the healthcare organization and Connect; check the demographics first against a master patient index before passing through the information; or return the result and make a record of it
The FHA team revises Connect based on technical recommendations from the NHIN Specifications Factory, which is made up of representatives of the Office of the Nationa Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) and other public and private sectors involved in health information exchange. The NHIN requirements align with the latest Health IT Standards Panel and health information exchange standards, Westberg said.
