The National Health Information Network (NHIN) began as a set of goals and principles, progressed to a logical architecture and Use Case definitions and then to a run-off competition of possible implementation architectures. Finally, last year an approach was chosen, interestingly though not from the four prototypes submitted the year before (by IBM, CSC, Northrop Grumman and Accenture). The approach chosen seems to be a mixture of the best aspects of the four prototype architectures evaluated in the NHIN ‘flyoff’ phase. Definition of what the NHIN would support has been going on for many years. The Figure below highlights the high level NHIN Connect solution architecture.

The Connect portion of NHIN refers to the focus on a ‘Gateway’ or message transport and management capability that supports universal exchange of limited care records. Connect is one of two elements of the NHIN architecture and both are SOA-based. The architecture is likely to expand into many other directions although there is also the distinct possibility that it could or should be restricted to support only data exchange / interoperability. The Adapter is needed to allow for integration with existing systems to the Gateway so that not every adopter has to invent an approach to sending messages from legacy systems although some customization is likely required. The current approach & configuration seem optimal.