The CONNECT Seminar '09 drew more than a thousand attendees from federal, state, tribal and local government, from universities, research facilities, healthcare providers and health IT vendors. The Seminar audience was informed of the value of the CONNECT solution for organizations building health information exchanges aligned with Nationwide Health Information Network conventions, standards and agreements. Conference speakers included Aneesh Chopra, the White House CTO, R. Scott Gould, Deputy Secretary, Veteran’s Affairs,Dr. David Blumenthal, the National Coordinator for Health IT, Vish Sankaran, FHA program director, Wounded Warrior advocate Sarah Wade, and Brian Behlendorf, an authority on the open source community. Presentations and videos from this successful event can be found at http://www.connectopensource.org/.

• Ensuring that federal agencies can seamlessly exchange health data between and among themselves; with state, tribal and local governments; and with private sector healthcare organizations.
• Leveraging federal expertise in creating a cross-agency health information interoperability architecture framework that provides a common vocabulary, simple tools and lifecycle processes.
• Facilitating cross-agency collaboration to create a unified federal approach in using health IT.

At their core, all FHA activities focus on improving citizen access to care, improving quality of care and reducing costs.

FHA activities are aligned to a five step process that provides the tools, solutions and guidance to help agencies plan and implement interoperable health IT solutions. The steps are (1) identify needs; (2) architect solutions; (3) plan investments; (4) implement solutions; and (5) measure progress.