One of the biggest gaps in the current efforts to build a National Healthcare Information Network in the United States is the adoption of electronic medical records. This gap is further widened by a lack of open, community-accepted interoperability standards for exchanging healthcare information currently included in commercial and open-source healthcare application offerings. The Eclipse Open Healthcare Framework (OHF) attempts to lower the barrier to vendor-neutral healthcare interoperability adoption by providing an open source collection of tools that enable developers to implement the exchange of medical information at the API level. By providing these tools, OHF aims to help accelerate the adoption of open specifications and reduce the vendor lock-in currently plaguing the healthcare IT industry.
In the first part of this talk, we will see how Eclipse OHF successfully enabled the sharing of healthcare information using open specifications in open-source as well as commercial applications, as seen at the latest IHE Connectathons. Additionally, we will discuss the community built around OHF and share the success stories of those who used OHF to showcase their products in a variety of healthcare events this so far this year. Finally, we will explore future plans for OHF and look forward at how FOSS will continue to grow and evolve inside the healthcare vertical.