Code-A-Thon

I attended the NHIN CONNECT Code-A-Thon in Portland, Oregon last week. It was two days of developers planning out and working on the next release of the NHIN CONNECT software (v2.3). There's a wiki up with notes from the two days worth of sessions.

But the interesting, relevant piece was when they started talking about future architecture. Two of the future topics (out of probably 20 or so) were grid computing and cloud computing. Because of the distributed nature of NHIN (CONNECT nodes everywhere), we had a short discussion about how data and computing power can be spread around in a distributed manner. Specifically, the question of hadoop and map-reduce was brought up about how jobs can be spread out over NHIN and NHIN-compatible systems.

On the whole, a pretty remarkable mini-con. This is a new approach to Federal open source projects and refreshing that OSS has come so far.

New NHIN Connect 2.1 released - initial feedback

Officially, the new release of the NHIN Connect software comes out tomorrow. Unofficially, it was located on the NHIN Connect web site on July 2nd. The release home is located at http://www.connectopensource.org/display/NHINR21/Release+2.1+Home even though this folder isn't in the main menu system at the time of this blog entry.

Here are some of the highlights:

1 - NHIN Adapter and Connector are now distributed as ONE pre-configured set-up. No more TWO-box solutions. ONE-box only!

2 - Documentation has been greatly improved. It isn't flawless, but it is definitely better.

For my next trick, I will be installing a NEW adapter+connector in the lab from scratch on a new VM to see a) how the install goes, but also b) how well the new adapter+connector system functions.

More to come...

Chronicles of NHIN CONNECT, volume 1

For the past few weeks, I have been in the process of becoming an expert in the NHIN CONNECT project. This project contains both the NHIN connect GATEWAY and the NHIN Connect ADAPTER.

The NHIN Connect project is located at http://www.connectopensource.org and version 2.0 is the current release of the code in question (although 2.1 is supposed to be forthcoming in early July).

While I can now configure a gateway and an adapter in under 1 hour each, there are several 'gotchas' that are not addressed in the documentation. Using the "pre-configured binaries' option (versus install-from-scratch), here are the 'gotchas' so far:

==>Adapter and Connect need different machines. I've tested them on the same one and functionality is mediocre at best. The lab has these set-up nicely on 2 seperate but equal machines.

==>Java is set to allocate 1.2 gb of memory from the start. Don't try this on a machine with less than 1 gb of memory... you want at least 2.

==>OID Registration doesn't work as advertised. Fortunately I haven't needed my OID for internall connectivity but when I connect outside of the lab, I will need this.

==>c:\java is hard-coded as java location. Make sure you install to this location. If you don’t some of the NHIN services break with odd errors. The documentation reflects inaccurate pointers to the java locations. And with _some_ of the application hard-coded with this java location, better safe than sorry.


==>The NHIN documentation says in multiple places that port 9080 is the non-secure port and that 9081 is the secure port. DON'T BELIEVE IT! Port 8181 is the secure port.

Thus concludes volume 1 of the Chronicles of NHIN CONNECT. Stay tuned for updates as the PHGRID <--> NHIN CONNECT interoperability testing continues...

NHIN Specification Factory

At the end of April, the NHIN released a detailed document outlining current NHIN specifications. The NHIN Specification Factory has been uploaded to the WIKI and can be downloaded at http://sites.google.com/site/phgrid/nhin-interoperability-1/SpecFactoryApprovedQ2Q3Tasking.ppt?attredirects=0 in the general section of NHIN Interoperability at http://sites.google.com/site/phgrid/nhin-interoperability-1 .

PHGrid/NHIN Interoperability

Dr. Savel and I were talking a bit today about how PHGrid and NHIN could interoperate.

NHIN works with two basic components: Gateways and Adapters. The Gateway is a common set of SOA infrastructure that is able to communicate with other Gateways within the NHIN. The Gateway is deployed within each participating network (e.g. CDC, NIH, DoD, VA, etc.) and uses an Adapter to translate NHIN traffic into the protocols necessary on the participating network.

Since the PHGrid set of web service protocols (WS-I, WS-Security, SOAP 1.1) are the same protocols used by NHIN, each PHGrid node is effectively an NHIN gateway. So any PHGrid node is able to communicate with any NHIN gateway (hosting services and calling services).

So what the PHIRG needs to test is security interoperability with NHIN. This can be accomplished by mapping an NHIN certificate to a PHGrid service and testing execution. We've done similar tests with Utah and caGrid networks, so this should be something worthwhile to test with ONC.

This has great potential as it would expand the reach of the NHIN into wherever PHGrid nodes are deployed (assuming the node security admins allow NHIN users to connect to their local node).

NHIN Presentation, AMDS

The presentation that would have been presented at the NHIN forum is now on the wiki. Unfortunately, the agenda gods conspired against us. Regardless, it is a good intro to the ideas of the AMDS, and how this is the type of service that enables population health situational awareness.