Overview
One of the core principles driving the design of the Interoperability Program was a commitment to generating implementable specifications. An implementable specification is one where the sought after capabilities are testable by industry and leads to approaches where plug&play interoperability becomes a tenable target.
There are international success stories that have demonstrated wins in the area of interoperability, we see them in North America, Europe and Asia. They are based on published specifications modelled in an interoperability platform called Gazelle. The platform implements the normative specification in the form of Actors/Transactions and offers technical connectivity capabilities for vendor systems to assert and test for claims that their solutions implement complement Actors. This allows the market to self test in preparation for industry events called Connectathons where solutions can and do carry our interoperable transactions with peers from other companies. The platform also supports conformity assessment and testing so that vendors that pass these can legitimately claim support for the enacted Actor/Transaction pairs.
This practical approach has been shown to support large scale interoperability and allow for eco-system planning for policy makers and jurisdictional governments alike,
For the fiscal year 2021-2022, Canada Health Infoway is exploring the possibility of developing the pan-Canadian Patient Summary implementable specifications by exercising its components on the Gazelle platform. Activities are underway to bring Gazelle to Canada and hold a technical connectivity event focused on solving for national interoperability challenges. These national events are called Projectathons. Early planning aims at holding the PS-CA Projectathon in February, 2022 as a virtual event with industry and provinces being invited as participants. There will be plenty of training and onboarding activities scheduled and published well in advance of the event. More information to come, stay tuned.